Nights in the Bayou
by maidenfairhair
Summary: When a young man arrives at the bayou of Calypso’s exile, she is anxious to sate her long denied passions. But as they explore each other, Calypso learns of a secret that could at last set her free... Jack/Calypso Pre-CotBP. COMPLETE.
1. Old Man River

**Nights in the Bayou**

**When a clever and unscrupulous young man arrives at the bayou of Calypso's exile, she is anxious to sate her long denied passions. But as they explore the veiled expanses of each other through several sporadic encounters, Calypso learns of his connection to Davy Jones and the secret that might at last set her free. Jack/Calypso, takes place over a span of years leading up to COTBP.**

**I was shocked at the lack of fanfics written about Jack and Calypso, considering their backstory is hinted at throughout the films and is undoubtedly one of the more intriguing questions of Jack's past. I was in the mood for something short and different, but there is an overload of brilliant sparrabeth on the market already, hence, this story. It will probably be between 6 and 8 chapters long, depending. Please do step out of your pairing comforting zone and enjoy!**

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_A boy sat on a dock, his bare feet swinging and a self-pleased smile on his face. With an agile twist of his hand, he loosed a stone and watched it flick and bounce a few times before succumbing to the restless waves. The water made him thirsty, made him ache to dive in, drench himself, lose himself. But the few coins he would get for watching the old man's dinghy were enough to hold him on the slender rotten boards. His stomach growled noisily and he pressed one small brown hand against it; he was always hungry. The coins might buy him a week's worth of bread. _

_Without quite meaning to, he lowered one foot into the water, which was warm after the summer rains. The sun flecked off the water and made the boy blink a few times, made him squint. _

"_No need to attack me, mate," he complained to the sun. He scooted back to lean against a rail, opening his book with the tattered cover. Inside there were pictures of Egyptians with painted eyes, legends of their gods, a history of their destruction. And beyond that, a poem in Latin. The boy pursed his lips and wondered what the good was in having something you couldn't even read. _

"_Ahoy!"_

_The man was back. The boy stifled a giggle at the shadow the old man's braids made across the walkway, like tentacles. His boots were heeled and noisy. _

"_That's very interesting," the man said, but the boy could only concentrate on the clinking jangle of coins in his pocket. "I half expected ye to make off with the boat, lad."_

_The boy looked at the man's face, puzzled. His skin was stretched taught across the bones, a myriad of reds and browns. "What would I want with a boat?" he asked at last, black eyes wide and serious. "All I want is a bit of bread." _

_A rough-bent mineral smile came to the older man's face, and he knelt down on the creaking boards. "A bit of bread, me fine lad?" The boy was exceptionally thin and wiry, same as a multitude of street children littering the ports of the New World like garbage. Probably the bastard remains of a European and whichever native girl had caught his eye for the night. And yet, the boy just sat looking at him, unafraid, comfortable with his proximity. "Didn't ye know, boy, a ship can bring ye all that and more?"_

"_Can it?" The boy's eyes flashed quizzically. Intelligent, skeptical, curious. Teague found himself intrigued out of his drunkenness. _

"_Aye, lad. A ship can take ye anywhere ye want to go, earn ye bread and gold besides… make ye king of yer own fate."_

"_King of my fate?"_

"_Aye. That's what a ship is: freedom."_

"_Freedom," the boy repeated, mimicking the old man's accent. "Freedom." He glanced at the dingy in the harbor, glanced at the pattering waves and the incandescent horizon. And then he laughed. "Freedom's a bit of a tall order for me, sir. I'd be all right with just some bread." _

_The old man pulled his taught lips into a grimace. "Well, my lad, I won't argue with ye. Come along, let's see if we can't find ye something to fill out those sunken cheeks. Ye look like a mummy." _

_The boy clutched the book across his chest. "Have ye… been to Egypt, sir?"_

"_That I have, my lad. Been many places. But if all ye want's bread, I won't bore ye with me tales."_

"_Wait," the boy tugged on Teague's hand. "Can ye understand this?" He opened the book delicately and pointed to the Latin poem. _

_The man shifted the book back and forth in front of his eyes until they adjusted to the tiny worn print. "Res ipsa loquitur, tabula in naufragio…" He grinned. "Table in a shipwreck, lad. The thing speaks for itself."_

"_Aye, but what does it mean?"_

"_The story?" Teague leaned in conspiratorially. "It's an old sea legend about Calypso." _

"_Calypso…" The boy had heard his share of fishermen's tales and superstitions, sneaking scraps by the firelight of many a port town. "Do ye believe she exists?"_

"_Aye," Teague said at once, low. "It's easy to believe something ye've seen with yer own two eyes. But she's an old soul, a part o' the sea, as it were… she's come down with men through the ages, my lad. Kept 'em close to the ocean, pining for black water and freedom." _

"_I've never met her," the boy said, tilting his head to one side wistfully. _

"_Ye may one day," Teague said, "One day when ye're stomach's been satisfied and ye yearn for a different kind of food to slake yer hunger." _

_The boy frowned in confusion, and Teague laughed a thick guttural laugh. _

"_Don't worry about it, boy. When yer old enough to read Shakespeare, ye'll understand." _

_They were in front of the ramshackle tavern now. "When will I be old enough to read Shakespeare?" _

"_It all depends," Teague said slowly, tossing a few coins into the air and catching them with a juggler's skill. The boy watched hungrily. "How about ye come along with me on me ship, and learn the ways o' the sea."_

"_Is it big enough for two?" the boy asked doubtfully. _

"_That dinghy ain't me only ship, lad. Just a quiet way to get around, if ye take my meaning. No, no, me real ship's in the harbor around the bay, unloading the cargo." _

"_If ye promise to read me the rest of the book, I'll come." _

_Teague stuck out his gnarled hand, thick with rings, and undaunted, the boy shook it. "It's a deal, mate."_

* * *

Heavy in the bayou and fragranced like lotus she dwelt, curved into the landscape and grown over with lichen and moss, a part of the constant half-darkness, a part of the flickering shadows and pressured humidity. Long had she been there, long had she sunk into the earth. Grudging had been her lesson in patience. Yet learned it she had, with none but Old Man River to whisper babbling wisdom to her through the long solitary nights. She learned the slow sonorous spreading language of the soil, the ticklish patterns of birds, the strange beauty of solid earth beneath her feet. She learned the texture of skin and hair and fur and feather, the voice of the creatures, the devastating harmony of it all. Grudgingly her heart changed, split, unfolded to encompass more than the jealousy of the sea… unable to possess the power that had once defined her, she found herself fitting into the fragile balance of life in the bayou. The understanding was a gift, the last gift of betrayal that saturated the symphonies called eternity. She accepted the gift. She accepted.

_I rise and fall with the springs, with the water and the rush and the drag and the drip. I feel them through the way the air lands on my spreading, budding fingers… those fingers that burn with expression; they are full of green and life that can not come out, not yet._

And now the black water of the sea streamed through the swamp in the shape of a hundred souls, skin the color of burnt charcoal, senses sharp with the far-away spirits of Africa. At the meeting of the salt with the fresh water she had discerned their approach, their encroachment into her living prison. Her human heart quickened, her palms grew moist, she licked the lips she longed to shed. A young man. A young man with smooth skin and a ship to his name and a crime that would haunt his idealism forever.

She could not have been more enthralled. How earnestly she watched for him, waited for him, sifted through the quenched crowds that already put down roots in her swamp. It would be _their_ swamp too now… but she didn't mind. They would learn the ways of it, and the swamp would expand, explore, make room for them. They would be safe here. Like a mother she would be to them… a mother to the little kingdom. Calypso knew the map of human desire all too well, but the nest that generally followed was foreign to her. What did it mean, to be a mother? She could not know—she had forgotten that already as she waited for the man. Candles were lit, and the fireflies competed with their esoteric twinkle. The young man came wading through the water, awed by the surroundings, unaware of anything except delight in his discoveries.

Calypso closed her eyes, thawed into the shade of the porch. What a long journey lay before this young man… what a lot of magic already surrounded him. The thread of his life was less a line than a complex web, Calypso thought… a tapestry of over-thrown shuttles, a child's mess, or hanging of a genius who can understand the tangle. It darted here and there before her eyes like Chinese fire, never still.

"Who's there?" He had seen her.

She was surprised by the depth of his voice, the earthiness. Offhanded she stepped into the dimming glow of dusk, leaned over the porch and beckoned him with a slim hand. "De mother of de swamp."

Entirely unafraid, the man climbed the ladder and stood before her with black eyes a mesh of desire like tree roots already inside her. He gestured to his heart, indicating respect in a manner she hadn't seen before.

"Ye are welcome here, young man."

He smiled. Her skin prickled. He was beautiful, his features unique and indefinable, his eyes a shade too dark for human eyes. And his skin was so very smooth—not a mark to be found across its coffee-brown surface. A clever and mischievous person, just on the cusp of manhood, ready to cross at any hour. Calypso deepened her gaze, looked him over with obvious admiration. Rather than blush or start, he waited expectantly. "I've followed some friends here… they seemed to think there were good spirits in the river."

"Aye, Old Man River, him have good music for de ears dat hear," she murmured rhythmically, not taking her eyes from him. "Yer friends be welcome too. It seems dey need hidin' from a cruel world."

"A confused world, rather," the young man said, sage-like understanding crossing his face.

"What be yer name, young man?"

"Jack," he said brightly, proud of the name. She waited a moment for more, but he appeared to be finished.

"Jack… and what be yer father's name?"

"Haven't got the slightest idea. I rather think I never had one at all."

"Sprung from de eart, maybe?"

"Or the sea." He grinned.

"Maybe," she said, circling him. "If ye had no father, who gave ye da name Jack?"

"A pirate. Before him I was just 'boy'. But he named me proper, he did."

She nodded solemnly, almost unable to see him for the pitch that had covered the sky. All the noise of the swamp gathered around them, waiting. "Jack. Maybe we find yer spirit match, yer _nahual_. Den ye have a full name." She noticed he was dressed after the manner of the Europeans, and the clothes seemed to contradict him. With meaning she placed both hands on his shoulders, sensing the physical strength of his arms and the hedonic nature held inside his body, forceful as a storm and too obvious for comfort. Her hands traveled up his neck, the lagoon of his voice, to his face and mouth. A clever mouth, sardonic and enticing… a face seemingly too genuine to have been raised by a pirate. "Have ye known a woman before, Jack?"

The question didn't seem to surprise him. Calypso was intrigued. He reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a shabby book. "I've only just begun to read Shakespeare, it seems."

"Dats a no, den," she widened her smile, softened her grip on his shoulders. Bending her face close to his, she could smell the ocean residue on his clothes, the sweat and unwashed hair and weariness of long travel, all of these smells erotic and almost painful. And yet she didn't want to be the sea now, with him… didn't want to sweep him away by force, drown him in her pleasure. She wanted to learn him as she learned the forest, little by little, inch by inch. Her lesson would be rewarded now, she would be patient with him, she would teach him. He would never again be so yielding to her… he would slip free of her wiles, become immune to her spell as most men never could. And that was what made him so alluring to her. No slavish sycophant was he; he was a free man, he was freedom. Envy mixed with the desire in her gut, envy that he should roam the world as he chose. "Maybe ye come inside, and sit wid me in my exile."

"I will, if ye tell me yer name."

Calypso studied the alternating seriousness and humor lighting his face. "Aint got no name fit for telling," she said softly.

He tilted his head curiously to one side. "May I call ye Calypso, then? Meaning no disrespect, goddess, but mother doesn't quite fit ye."

"Aye, that be true," she whispered, as he leaned forward to hear her better. And she thought she had been playing shrewd, hidden away, disguised. Was her identity so plain on her face that a stranger could read it?

He seemed to guess her thoughts. "Don't worry, yer secret's safe with me. I'm no mystic. It were another what told me about ye."

"Indeed?" her confidence came rushing back. So men still spoke of her, told her stories and sought her favor. A thundering pressure in her heart shot throbbing jolts down her body; how she longed to sweep over them in a biding gale, longed to caress them with paper light foam on a shore.

He placed one foot on par with hers so that he was right against her, and she shivered. He was going to be better at loving than pirating, that was certain. Already he outplayed her. "Maybe an African name for ye, instead? So as yer new subjects can honor ye proper?"

"Aye," she whispered, licking her lips, thirsty with an unquenchable thirst. "Is dat de only reason ye brought dem?"

"One never comes to Calypso without an offering, or so I was told."

Oh, he was good at this. She smiled wider, her eyes slits of voided want. Freeing a cargo of slaves for freedom's sake might have been handsome, but laying the act before her feet, for her favor… oh she could almost taste his coffee-brown skin. "Ye want to know me, aye, Jack of no other name?"

She was gaining back ground as he swallowed, his pulse quickening. "That's why I've come."

She slid lightly down his face with the back of her hand. Like the boon of sanded morrow on a sinking ship she pressed against him, against his moss-and-wood frame, against his malachite steady texture. He was just her height, young, so young. As though preparing to taste a rare wine Calypso drifted her face before his, brushing his nose, his eyelashes, the impish smile still coiled at his mouth. "It be hard to kiss a set smile," she hummed into his ear.

"Well I have had some practice at that bit," he admitted, "and the women who taught me, she said nothin's more enticing than a man who smiles before he kisses ye."

Calypso felt a surge of envy for the woman, some half-crown bar wench, no doubt. "Let me see if she told ye true." She parted her lips and pressed them against his, lightly, teasingly, but at once he opened his mouth and sent her head spinning with the force of his passion. His tongue was already in her mouth as he cupped her face with his palms, and she broke away, laughing. "Der ye have it. Never kiss a stranger with yer palms open, Jack. Use de back of yer hand. Safer for ye, reassuring for her. A man who kisses wid de back of his hand won't strike her wid it, nor cling to her when she needs to fly."

The corners of his mouth curled up, his eyes full of laughter. "Aye, that's a good thought. The goddess grants her wisdom graciously."

With a chuckle she pulled him past the threshold, into the glow of her hut. He looked around with enthusiasm at the obscure hodgepodge of trinkets and oddments littered about, the parrot that fluttered away from his perch in one corner, the haze of incense burning from upstairs.

"Not quite what you imagined for de goddess, eh?"

Jack shook his head in wonder. "Aye, it's different. Good different. Feels right… comfortable."

"Like ye belong here, is dat it?"

"Maybe," he responded with a wink, taking a few steps around, peering into one doorway. The single table looked newly-hewn, the wood pine yellow, and a few candles smoldered on a platter in the middle. Jack ran his fingers through the flames and the light in the room guttered unsteadily.

"How many years have to yer name?" Calypso asked, eyes fixed on his brown fingers.

Jack shrugged, a bemused look on his face. "Don't know. Not quite eighteen, I guess."

Eighteen—less than eighteen years to his name. And yet, he had spent much time with this pirate who had named him, that was certain. And little habits, little clues about him suggested he had worked for the Europeans as well, one of the trading companies perhaps. He had a charm for allaying suspicion, a worldly air that contrasted against his boyish exuberance. She cleared her throat, toying with one of her necklaces, the shells soothing. "Not dat it matter much, Jack. Ye be da right age to come here."

He had picked up a skin-covered drum and began tapping it rhythmically. She nodded her head in time as he began to move faster, seeing the picture of the cadence, his ship tearing through ocean storms, and him laughing in the midst. He slowed and she could see an indolent port town faded by the sun, and a boy on a dock there awaiting life. Abruptly he stopped. "Eavesdroppin' on my memories?"

"Ain't my fault dat ye wear dem on yer sleeve." She stood behind him, lowering her face into his neck. "One day ye'll learn to play things closer to de vest. Safer for ye."

He leaned back and caught her painted mouth in a kiss, tracing the henna marks on her fingers, the smudged kohl around her eyes, exploring her ever-young body like a map. He said with his grin that was already becoming familiar, "Where's the fun in being safe?"

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_Next chapter will be up soon... reviews much appreciated! _

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	2. Line Between the Worlds

**Ch. 2  
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**Thank you so much for the reviews-- I know this story is a bit unorthodox, but I'm delighted that you are willing to come on the journey! **

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"_Aye, that's an overhand knot," Teague said, glancing at Jack's work. His hands were deft as a weaver. "Ye were born for the sea, lad."_

_Jack flushed with pride. "And here, I learned this one too." Over loop, under loop, up, down. "Round turn and two half hitches." _

_Teague slapped his back. "Before long, ye'll be captaining yer own ship." _

"_When will I get a ship?"_

"_When ye're old enough to read Chaucer," Teague replied. His tentacle-braids hung exceptionally thick around his face today, his weltered trinkets lost under the brewing storm. The dead days at sea were a sailor's secret joy. The rum came out and stories were told as they waited for what fate (or doom) may bring them._

"_Maybe one day I'll teach ye the Figure Eight knot," Teague said, one finger wet in the air, on the lookout for the wind that would come. _

"_I know that one," Jack retorted, his fingers already moving._

"_Do ye now?" Teague humored him. "But I weren't talkin' about any sailor's knot, Jack lad. I were talkin' about a piece of eight… of which there be nine." His voice was barely a flicker, and Jack leaned into the rum on his breath. "Figure eight round the piece of eight, to bind her in her bones. And it be passed down to the greatest of sailors." _

"_Bind who in her bones?"_

_Teague laughed loudly. "Bind her in her skin, more's like. But it ain't a man's pleasure to cut himself off from the sea, no matter how dangerous. One day I'll pass on me piece of guilt and wash me hands of the whole mess." _

_Jack stuck the words in the back of his head, where he kept the bits of Latin Teague slung off sometimes, and the remedies given by the wise old quartermaster, and all the stories he could get his hands on. "When will I be old enough to read Chaucer?" _

_Teague didn't respond, merely nudged his bottle to Jack. "Have a swig, boy, and down it like a man. Ye're old enough for that, at least." _

_Carefully laying down his rope, Jack reached for the bottle, reached for the smell that stuck in his memory stronger than anything else. He knew the taste before it hit his throat, blistering and torrid, the heart-healing ambrosia of the gods. He wasn't aware of finishing the bottle until Teague snatched it away. _

"_Good lad!" he laughed, and the first mate hobbled by with a fist in the air. The story circulated the ship rapidly, how the little cabin boy downed half a bottle of rum in a few steady gulps and then walked the rail to boot. "Ye'll be legendary by the time we make port," Teague growled, almost as pleased as Jack. "And all for downing a ration a' rum. Anyone'd think these swine never saw a kid drink before." But after that Teague rationed the rum to Jack as fair a portion as the rest received._

* * *

They were explorers. Moments faltered, shattered, mocking, clever words and the organic spreading of their limbs about each other, the bursting exploration, the slowing as cool pressure from the sky changed the air of the bayou. Calypso had seen the bayou grow old and dark with remembering, even as she did, she had known the sun at its birth, the dew of the earth. She had known the sudden blade edge of a cry silenced, the land silenced, the sea silenced by man. She had known so many things… but she had never known him. She had never known him. He was a new thing.

"Dalma," he said at last, as though he had just recalled something long sought for. The fragrance of tea leaves sloshed across the new-hewn yellow wood of the table, a sacrifice of the swamp to its mother. She smoked rolled grasses across from him, the smoke loosening her mind, energizing her spirit.

"Dalma," Calypso repeated in a chant, searching her mind, searching old spells and riddles, old lovers and betrayers. Watching him through the sodden haze, she could almost pretend she watched him from the eyes of a storm at sea, watched him drive his ship toward the gale.

"Ye're name!" Jack cried, eyes so wide they must be a mistake. "It must be Dalma, by my reckoning."

"Ye're reckoning?" her long eyes warmed, her long fingers slid through the spill to his.

"Aye," he said, certain as the devil. "The Africans told me. Dalma means 'many sided'… 'versatile'."

"Ain't many sides left to me here," she muttered sharply.

But the matter, apparently, was already decided. He drew in a sip of tea, the steam settling across his face, deepening the hues of his skin. It was his skin she found herself focusing on again and again—skin that contained, imprisoned so much. She wanted to tear him out of that skin and look at his soul, learn his spirit, set him free. The table and the tea were forgotten. Deprived of her old senses, she searched him with her hands and her feet, with her lips and her nose. They were naked together, and her skin was much darker than his. Variations of the bayou, colors of the earth when they really ought to be colors of the sea.

"Dalma, Dalma," Jack repeated raggedly, and every time he said the name, it burned itself deeper. Aye, she was Dalma. Many sided. She was both man and woman, surrounding like a predator, guiding as the experienced do, yet giving herself up to the labyrinth of pleasure he could offer with his coffee-brown skin and the ship-learned strength of his hands.

There was no bed in the cabin. They lay on the floor together, and it felt right, uneven and splintered as their minds broke apart and their bodies took over.

"I warn ye, Jack of no other name…" her head was thrown back, her skin alight with unnatural heat, "ye won't be layin' wid a goddess in true form. Were a time ye'd be layin' wid the ocean itself, but dat time is gone…"

"Dalma," Jack said, twisting her name in his soil-heavy voice, "Are you ashamed to be human?"

Ashamed. What a simple question, spoken from the lips of this god-man who astounded her like a too-early fleck of green poking its way through the still-frozen ground. Both wise and foolish beyond his years—or perhaps foolish was the wrong word. Naïve. Eager. Painfully bright. The breath went out of her; he was too honest. How long had it been since she had encountered this kind of honesty—the kind that cleared away a haze of gray matter, that cloak of mystery she draped herself with? "I don't know wad it mean to feel shame." Her fingers clawed at the wood as he traced his tongue down her belly. "But I know wad it mean to feel imprisoned. To feel trapped." Music, some kind of music twirled viciously in her mind when she said that, and his eyes were a pyre.

He never slowed his hands; he was creative in his touch as only the inexperienced could be. "Trapped?"

"Aye trapped," she shuddered and arched, lost for a moment.

"This is but one form of ye," he said. "One side. And it's already more than most of the world could bear." He had made her smile again, that stretched cat smile, that sphinx smile. "Ye walk the line between the worlds."

"And ye've come to walk it wid me…" she was reversing their positions, pressing his hands to the floor. "I'll take ye dis time." That was all she said, and Jack gave himself up to her.

* * *

"Der was a tribe called de Nahua. Dis was der count of days." She lifted a clay plate, round and sculpted, old faded paint visible here and there. "Dem long gone."

"And I would have guessed cards," Jack said, lifting an eyebrow. Deep morning sunlight streamed through the cracks and windows of the hut; it seemed they were inside a living tree. He was already picking up her habits, the side-long glance that worked the same magic as a sword, the way she spoke with her fingers.

"Cards are for dividin' wealth, not speakin' to da spirits," Calypso said blithely. "Dis will be hard since we don' know yer time of birth."

"Hard for a goddess?"

She tapped his lips with her finger. "Pert, very pert, Jack. We'll have to do someting about dat sparkle in yer eye. Too bright fer a pirate, if dats what yer set to be."

"Well, considerin' I stole a string of black pearls from the East India Company to bring to yer door, I don't think I have a choice." He said this cheerfully, and Calypso thought, he didn't care one way or another. Unable to worry for the future, that was the mark that made him not quite human.

"Jack, Jack," she had never before bothered much with names, but he seemed very proud of his. "Ye always have a choice."

She carried the plate out into the presence of the bayou, naked to the waist and purple in the strange refracted beams that managed to cut through the canopy. They climbed down the ladder and waded into the water together. Jack felt the mud leaching between his bare toes, sucking him down, hot and persuasive. He felt the tepid brown water slither around his legs, the humid air too thick to breath. And all around them, that string of black pearls melted between the trees, both curious and wary.

Calypso bent until her breasts touched the water, balancing the plate with a hand in the slow trickle. A ribbon of black glided by them and Jack started, eliciting a laugh from Calypso. "Not used to snakes, are ye?"

"Not this close," he said, still a child in so many ways, unafraid.

"Put yer hands on de clay and close yer eyes," she ordered, constantly shifting her feet below the water to prevent getting caught. He was doing the same thing, mimicking her, learning from her. He spread his hands on top at once, resisting the urge to feel the raised markings and try to understand them.

The plate began to turn. He kept his hands still, his fingers sliding up and down the ridges, his senses becoming more alert. He felt the water was rising, or perhaps he was sinking—he felt the stifling incubus air clogging his mouth, wreathing his mind, stretching his awareness. Down, down he went, and around went the clay, and his fingers remained steady. The _ehecatl_ passed, the _atl_ and the _malinalli_.

"What do ye remember?" Calypso's voice shimmered from above the water, deep as a man's voice and harsh.

He tried to speak but his mouth was filled with water. Limbs out of his control, wrapped tightly about his chest, pressure like a beating drum licked him clean. The _Quiahuitl_ went under his fingers, and then the _calli_.

"What do ye remember?" she asked again.

The clay went on spinning, and he felt sun, sun that had come too close to earth, and it baked him into a dead white ground that burned his eyes, and the shadowed bones of a forgotten ship lay beside him. The _ollin_ and the _tecpatl_ passed by. Then the _miquiztli_.

"What do ye remember?"

His head burst from the water, his eyes opened. And he was not wet. Had not been underwater at all. The spinning clay had stopped. And he remembered everything.

Calypso bent her face to the plate, nudged aside his fingers. "De line between de days, as it were. De sparrow."

"There was no sparrow on the plate," he said.

"Every count of days has one left over, one day left for de spirits. De day of de sparrow; they say, it goes by quickly. Yer nahual."

"The sparrow," Jack said, tilting his head. He looked at the world like a newborn, eyes fully open.

"Aye, Jack de Sparrow."

"Jack the sparrow," he repeated. And then he splashed her. Dropping the clay beneath the waves, she swept the water against him and they both shrieked in the fractured light. Eyes watched from the corners of the bayou, watched and smiled as they had not smiled since they lost the red soil of their ancestors.

"Dem our children," Calypso said, falling onto her back in the murky brown. "Ye rescued dem, and I be der mother."

Smiling with all of his teeth, Jack ducked under the water and swam until the tree roots blocked his way. "Come out!" he cried. "Come out!" And he splashed into the shadows. Not many minutes had passed before the lagoon was filled with sun-soaked laughter, sable hands tossing the water back and forth, tossing the old darkness away.

* * *

"I want to mark ye," she said, exhausted against him, both of their strength spent many times over. The first time she had taken him; now he took her, learned the ways of his body, learned in her indistinct depths. "I want to mark ye."

"Do it," he said hoarsely.

"Anywhere I want?"

"All over if ye like."

He shouldn't give up to her so easily, she thought. He would take many women as he had taken her, but if ever a woman took him, it would expose that weakness. "I don' have a knife," came her voice, still gasping.

"Ye have yer teeth."

With effort she twisted her head against his left arm, cresting the smooth brown skin that so intoxicated her. And then, very quickly, she broke it open with the sharp edge of one fingernail, one jagged line straight down, and deep. Blood sprang to its surface.

"Again," he moaned. "Make sure it lasts."

She put the finger in her mouth, metallic and searing. And then she went back, again and again until she could taste the blood no more. The coffee brown skin was marked. He could never go back from that mark.

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	3. Of Marks and Maps

**Chapter 3**

A/N: Yeah, I'm a Sparrabether writing a fic about a different couple. Sooo… for those of you into symbolism, foreshadowing, and such, find the 24 references to Sparrabeth already made in this fic… LOL.

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"_Ye've made yer bed, so lie in it, Jacky." Teague's shadow hung over the spot Jack had exiled himself to, a rail on a dock, a dock that seemed somehow familiar. And Teague's blunt directive sent a bit of fear down Jack's spine. He was surprised how quickly one accommodated oneself to fear—how quickly one's life came to revolve around it. So recently it had been the shadowed land of slaves and near-dyings. And what had Teague said to him about pride coming before the fall? "God, boy, stand on yer own two feet. I warned ye of that company." _

_But ye didn't warn me of the aftermath, Jack thought dully. Didn't warn me of a face like snakes and a hand like ice. Didn't warn me of the unreasonableness of despair. Didn't warn me not to barter one freedom for another. _

"_Its life, lad. That's all it is. Maybe it weren't for the best but the thing's done now." Ye've made yer bed, so lie in it. _

_The jutting shape of a black ship cut apart the horizon, cut apart Jack's line of vision, coaled-out his view of Teague. For the first time Jack knew what it was to hold love and hate in the same hand, for the same entity. The duality of love. Or perhaps the duality of need. Yes, need was a better word. How ironic, how contradictory that he had made himself a slave to freedom. _

"_Every man has an idol," Teague said softly. He always meant to be harsher with the boy, but couldn't. Couldn't see it through. Those inhuman black eyes were a spell to man and beast… to goddess and now the sea himself. It was unfortunate—how many destinies would be thwarted by that spell? _

_Jack was perturbed at the softening of Teague's voice. He lifted his face up with the clearest smile he had ever put forth, squinted his eyes at the moon, laughed as though he hadn't a care in the world. And he was gratified to see confusion curl across Teague's face like a cat-o-nine-tails. _

"_What do ye mean with that grin, boy? Are ye mocking the gods?"_

"_Aye," Jack said, spring to his feet, capering about. "I weren't upset over the bargain. It's just a fine night for listening to the waves." _

_Teague shook his head, incredulous. "Fearless. Absolutely fearless." _

_Jack put his tongue out toward the moon and his heart uttered a silent prayer that Teague would never know how terribly afraid he had been in the presence of the Dutchman, or how terribly afraid he was even now, days later. It would never do to have Teague think he was a coward. _

"_Here," Teague stuck out his hand with familiar brusqueness. A book was in it. He hoped the boy would never know the lengths he had gone to fetch this one—and all because he had heard Jack mention it in passing weeks ago. It would never do to have Jack think he had gone sentimental. _

"_Il Principe," Jack said, taking it with reverence. "Didn't know ye could get it in these parts…"_

_Ye can't. "I have a fair share of luck… all stolen, of course." _

"_Well, that's a lark, that's quite…" He shifted on his feet, the ship behind him blotting out the stars, making it impossible to guess the book's color. _

"_Ye know yer Italian, eh? So get to it. And don't waste time having that cargo to the Cove." _

"_Aye," Jack said, still transfixed on the book. "Aye, it'll be there." _

"_Jack my lad…" his voice trailed off into the groping murk. He thought he might shake his hand, show him he was proud in the face of disastrous bargains, in the face of the brand newly etched into his skin. Instead he rolled up his own sleeve. "I wouldn't have been sorry to see ye respectable, boy, but ye done an old man proud any way." _

_The glow of delight that beamed across Jack's face was hidden in the overhang of his ship._

* * *

She saw things move everywhere. The hut that had once been a solace of clear space—clean air, a clear aura— was shrinking. How many months had passed since the boy Jack left, and the visitors began coming? Many months; few years. The answer was simple as his fearless black eyes. He had given her away.

Perhaps he had thought it was for her own good. Perhaps it had been pride that made him talk at the cups. Perhaps the world had grown so dark he had taken drastic measures. But come they did, a few here and there, a trickle that scared the bayou back into hiding. The bayou waited for Jack and hoped with every flat-bottomed boat he had returned. Sailors came, pirates came, wise women and a soldier or two. Calypso took them all. Took their payments, their gifts, their bodies, left them with a handful of magic they couldn't understand, sent them on their way. But that boy, _that man_, hadn't returned.

Calypso lay on her back above the swamp, the boards of the porch curving to fit her, encasing her. But she didn't think of herself as Calypso now. She was Dalma. Dalma, many-sided. She had built the shack with her own two hands and never wanted a grander edifice. The building of it had eased the fury of betrayal… the hot hours alone and toiling, her first understanding of the bayou. In moments of resentment the living wood was the opium that soothed her spirit. How much of her life was spent in that, soothing the fire, calming the storm, taming the wildness inside her for survival's sake? Was this how all humans lived?

Her mind was beginning to be like the hut. Strange forgotten memories appeared here and there in visible form, fragments of past lives and threads of the time she had believed in love. Trinkets and tapestries, laced with the burning chemical regret. She began to think she would never escape. She began to wonder if she wanted to.

The shape of a bird outlined against the sun met her like a hallucination. She idly watched the bird—the sparrow— flit from tree to tree and sky to sky, seeking something. Calypso envied it that too-clear sky. Her hand slid off the porch and the water rose to meet her, whispering to her, bending the laws of nature for her touch. _What news? _her hand said to the water.

_News of coming, Aunt_, the water said back. _News of returning. We hear his echo from far away. We hear and his noise has changed. His spirit has changed._

_Not broken?_ her fingers shot back. It seemed too early for that.

_Not broken_, the water said in a fast gurgle. _We cannot spell the change to you._

Calypso's hand plunged deeper and the water, markedly, was cold. It was winter somewhere, and the seasons changed without her. Deeper her hand went until she felt mud. The water couldn't tell her the change, but the earth could. The earth knew.

The mud was like flesh in her hands, the blood of the earth, a revelation. Groaning and laughter, life and death, she would never be fully human, she could never stop her mind, her senses from that endless union. She could writhe with the torment of too many perceptions, she could fall with the colored leaves and bury herself in decay, but she could never be fully human. And wasn't that what she wanted more and more, to leave behind that last cord binding her to another world? To leave behind that shame and that pain and that bitterness?

_Fear_, the earth said, _we smell fear. Love and unlove, and the searing of skin. The brand goes deeper than he suspects. He doesn't want to read now, doesn't want to waste his time. Time's running out and he can't forget it. He drinks and drinks, peers over the edge, tries to prove to himself he isn't scared with a thousand dares._

"De wind drives him back to me," Calypso said aloud, abruptly loosing the earth. The wind, at least, still served her.

* * *

"Dalma!" His voice was warm, playful. "Dalma, have ye left the swamp? Where are ye?"

She stood in her doorway and watched him, knowing his words were for the Africans and not her. For the second time he arrived at night. This time he was alone.

"Dalma!" he cried again, as stealthy figures slid out of the shadows.

Calypso lit a cigarette in the embers of a torch. She watched him tie up his boat on the roots of a giant tupelo. She watched him strip off the jacket he wore, unaccustomed to the clime. She took in the lines of his body—taller, aye, a bit taller than last time, more muscled. Hands growing careless in their movements. Hair longer, the ends burnished and dried by the sun and poor diet. On his arm, a new mark. And his eyes—they flitted back and forth in almost a suspicious way. Was he afraid? Afraid of her, afraid of her land? His movements were slightly off balance— drink or weariness? "Jack de Sparrow…" she finally called, throat constricting as took in another draft. "What are ye looking for?"

His face brightened. "Why, you of course! What did ye think, Dalma? Were ye hiding from me?"

"Aye," she said with irony. "Hiding in me own house."

He waded through the water and caught hold of the ladder.

"So… ye're coming up den?"

He paused. "Well… that's why I came. To see ye."

"Ah…" she blew out a trail of smoke. "Jack de Sparrow. Jack de traitor. Jack de bad man."

"Bad man?" he repeated, his face giving away too much. He looked crestfallen. The words burrowed into his mind like a virus.

"Did ye not give up me hidin' place to de world, Jack? Did ye not send dat rabble of sailors and pirates to me door?"

He let go of the ladder and stepped back. "Aye. Didn't know ye were such a secret."

"Well I'm not anymore."

He seemed to change his mind, and scaled the ladder very quickly. "Ye've got it all wrong," he began, widening his eyes, talking with his hands. "The world needs ye something fierce, ye see… and since ye were here all alone, and ye seemed glad the last time I brought ye company, I figured ye could help us out in our plight. Men whisper yer name again, Dalma… they pray to you on the water. How could they do that if ye remained always a secret, eh?"

Calypso let out a laugh. "I see how it be, witty Jack. Ye've learned to talk yer way out of every danger."

"Not every," he returned, though he seemed proud of breaking the tension. "Haven't ye missed me at all?"

"Missed ye?"

"Aye," he stepped closer, all mischief. "Just the littlest bit?"

She matched his tone. "How could I miss someone I barely know?" She took his arm and studied the brand with interest. "So, dey got ye, did dey?"

A powerful emotion crossed his spirit, and then cooled. He smiled and shrugged. "That's life for ye. Ye make yer bed and then ye lie in it."

"Ye don't fool me, Jack de Sparrow. Ye cried when dey branded ye."

"Me? Cry?" he scoffed. "Ye're highly mistaken. Practically branded meself, as it were. Wanted them to spell out the whole word instead of one measly letter."

She reached to his chest, spread her fingers along it. His heart was racing so fast she wondered he was standing upright._ So afraid!_ "I mean," she said gently, "ye cried in here. Ye're spirit weren't pleased by it." Tentatively, she wrapped her arms around him, feeling small against his height. His heart slowed, his breathing relaxed. "No need to be afraid here, Jack."

"I'm not afraid," he said unsteadily. Her smell like wet earth and incense, like rain or sweated summer spread through his mind, numbed it a little. She touched him like an old friend might, unreserved. "I'm not afraid," he said again. He gave her a lopsided smile. "Not of you, anyway."

Her mouth tipped. "A wise man would say, if ye were goin'to be afraid of anyting, it ought to be me."

"Just as I suspected," he said. "Yer Lady Macbeth."

"Lady Macbeth?" She reached for her cigarette on the ground and put it back in her mouth. "And by dat token, who are ye?"

"Puck!" Jack said proudly. "Obviously."

"Puck and Lady Macbeth… somehow I don't think dose two would've been friends."

"I've read them all front to back," Jack asserted, his eyes giving the phrase a double meaning. "I know Shakespeare very, _very_ well by now."

"Do ye?" she played into his insinuation. "Makes a woman curious…"

He leaned in and his tongue wrestled the cigarette from her. "I need a map," he said abruptly, tossing ash into the sliver of space between them. "Or a set of bearings."

"What do I look like, Davy Jones?" she did that one on purpose.

"Thank yer stars ye don't," he said, hardly missing a beat. "Tentacles everywhere! Like Medusa. But I think ye can help me anyway."

"Do ye?"

He flipped the cigarette between his teeth and slid it back into her mouth. "We can help each other, eh?"

"I'd of given ye de bearings ye wanted," she said in amusement. "But if ye want to barter, so be it."

"Not barter!" he said, as though insulted. "Help each other… as friends do."

"Friends or lovers?" she asked.

"A goddess… and her faithful worshipper," Jack whispered, knowledge of his triumph already in his eyes. "Ye see, I've read of an island... an island known as the Isle de Muerta…"

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**More to come soon.**

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	4. Counting Magic

**Ch. 4**

**A/N: Has it really been almost 2 weeks? I'm embarrassed. Time has really gotten away from me lately. Thank you so much for all the reviews—I can't tell you how glad I am to read them, and I'm having a wonderful time with this story. Cheers, and I hope you enjoy!**

Unrelated note: I would like to plug a different and very creative take on Jack's backstory-- Willofthewisp has begun a wonderful story about Jack called "The Sparrow's Journey", which can be found on her profile page. I highly recommend it.

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_"So ye've known her, eh lad?"_

_Jack was on the last page of Il Principe. "Beg pardon?"_

_"The goddess," Teague growled. "The swamp witch." He combed through his moustache with long fingers, better suited to a Spanish guitar than tying ropes._

_Jack couldn't read his expression. "Are we talkin' known like biblically known or what?"_

_"Biblically?" Teague chuckled deep in his throat. "Now there's one book I never learned ye." He swatted the slim volume out of Jack's hand and leaned back, whiskey and smoke thick across his form, arms too strong for making music. "What did ye think I meant, boy?"_

_"Just tryin' to gauge whether it were a good thing or a bad thing, to have known her…"_

_Teague smiled, eyes old embers, hotter than you'd expect. "Tryin' to gauge? Fool lad, it's a wonder I even bother. Ye never base yer actions on other folk's morality, Jacky. I think I've taught ye that at least, haven't I?"_

_More or less… or less… "Aye, then, I've known her. Biblically, metaphorically, literally, and any other way you can imagine." Jack didn't expect and therefore couldn't steel himself for the blow that hit him across the face, landing him square athwart the cove dock with triple vision and a ring in his ears. But no, it wasn't ringing in his ears… it was laughter. The laughter of a pirate, the laughter of a good man. He hated that laughter right now._

_"Jack, Jack…" Teague had been drinking, not a few gulps after meat but really drinking, steadily for a few days. Jack curved his head back, eyeing him like a wary cat. It paid to be skittish when Teague was drunk. His boots squeaking, Teague lowered himself level with Jack and pulled his head in close, close enough to kiss him. "That makes two of us, Jacky. We're peas in a pod, eh?"_

_"Not quite so green, sir." And what a very strange pod that would be. "So all the pirates have known her, is that it?"_

_"Hardly!" Teague fumbled through one pocket, and then another. Felt around his neck, down the linked chains strung there. Into his greasy braids. Ah, there it was. "Honesty is worth somethin', anyway, Jacky." He handed him the coin. "Worth yer soul, maybe."_

_"That'd be nice but I've already sold it, ta," Jack said with a practiced smirk. Oh, how well he had learned the delicate art of fearlessness. Or the appearance thereof, anyway._

_"Daft, completely daft." When Teague said that, there was pride in his gaze, in the way he cuffed Jack's ear like when he was younger. And somehow Jack knew he would always be a little boy around Teague. Teague wouldn't ever let him grow up. "That's why I like ye, boy. Ye make me feel sane by comparison… a good solid chap, as it were. But I'll tell ye, ye can only sell yer soul once, but ye can trade it and barter it and bank on it forever. It ain't over till they pull the lever, Jacky. It ain't over till yer dangling in yer last dance."_

_Jack realized the docks were completely empty, deserted. His very own ship sat before them, as it ever had. Yes, meetings with Teague meant docks and drinks and riddles, always riddles. And the Devil's Throat wasn't something any sailor took lightly during winter. Any sailor, that was, except him._

_"This coin can buy yer soul back, Jacky."_

* * *

Magic. That was the word for it. A very funny word, Calypso had always thought… meant to encompass too much, always used for suggesting too little. But Jack was magic. Had magic inside… perhaps more than any other human she'd met. Restlessness and passion… or was it merely the unearthly obscurity of his eyes?

"Don't judge a book by its cover, Dalma," Jack said, catching the way she studied him from across the room.

"Ye are a pirate," she said plainly. "And ye look like a castaway."

Jack swirled the contents of his mug moodily. "Maybe I'm more of a castaway."

She laughed. "Don't be that way wid me, Jack de Sparrow. Come over here and tell me about dis treasure of yers."

He slumped as though defeated and sat down on the floor, leaning against her. She knelt and wound her fingers through his loose hair, applying pressure to his temples, enjoying the sigh of relaxation he emitted. "Ye can make me look like a pirate, can't ye, Dalma?"

"Of course," she said softly, as though humoring a child. The way he felt against her, the way he leaned into her and surrendered himself to her touch—it was magic. Like giving birth; mysterious and almost erotic, violent with emotion. "I can make ye into whatever ye have a mind to be." Absently she wound a few strands of his hair in her brown fingers and began braiding.

"That feels so…" he didn't complete the sentence, and he didn't have to. He had practically melted into her. "Don't stop," he murmured.

"Have ye slept lately?" she asked in amusement.

"Had to take the cargo in… couldn't stop reading…" Calypso knotted the end of the braid and gathered another strand. "Do ye really think I'm a bad man?"

"I don't care," she said. "I don't care what kind of man ye are."

"Even if I were very bad… really wicked… ye still wouldn't care, eh?"

"Not a pinch," she returned, licking her fingers and concentrating. "I'd have care, though, if ye were too good. Good men come to bad ends, don't dey?"

Jack grunted. "I never met a good man."

Calypso wet her lips, closed her eyes. "Neither have I."

"The treasure," Jack said, drawing himself away from sleep. "Aztec treasure. Treasure like that could make a man safe… make him free, Dalma."

"And how did ye hear 'bout dis Aztec treasure?" she said, her voice lilting on a breeze, warm as a blanket.

"My nahual told me, obviously." He was grinning. He wasn't going to tell her.

Her weaving fingers quickened ever so slightly. "It ain't what you tink, Jack."

"So the stars tell me."

"Don't play with yer mortality, Jack. It be a precious gift, de only gift given yer kind. Don't ever give up yer ability to die."

"Spoken like a true immortal."

She pressed her lips against his forehead, her skin sensitive in a thousand ways, achingly responsive. He loved her skin… the color of it, the flawed sketched history. It made her glad for a moment, glad of her captivity, glad of her caged form—to know that he loved it, wanted it despite its singularity, despite its imperfection. Or perhaps because of its imperfection. Some bit of wisdom flitted behind her eyelids—something about the captive coming to care for its captors? But he was not her captor. "I don want ye to stop believing," she finally muttered. A half-finished braid dropped from her fingers; they were on the floor together, knotted together, growing into one another. "I'll tell ye."

"Aye?" he seemed to have forgotten the treasure. Too soon, too late he realized she had removed the flax string around his wrist—the bit of thread that kept an old coin. Too late he jerked his arm away. She had it in her hand.

"Curious…" she muttered, closeting her look. But she recognized it. Oh yes, she recognized it. "A curious trinket for a sparrow to own…"

"The only money to me name," Jack said, his fingers trailing down her arm and reaching, with the most calculated innocence, for the coin. Just as deftly, she eluded their grasp.

"Surely ye haven't read Chaucer yet… surely dat Teague weren't so foolish…"

She knew.

Jack snapped to his feet, his hand flexing for a weapon, though he could not have guessed why. And she was up too—up with her prize, her face twisted into some feral shadow of itself.

"_Nkome kakinda: teka vútula mbusa,"_ Calypso said in warning. To strike with a strong fist, you must turn over your hand.

"_Ukipepeta nafaka, inabaki iliyo safi," _Jack replied, voice subdued. Had she forgotten who had brought her subjects to her, from halfway around the world? Had she forgotten her own name?

A moment passed. And then another. All was blistered pitch in the bayou where Jack faced Calypso, his eyes three shades darker than hers.

"Give me back the coin."

"No."

"Dalma," he took a step towards her, his heart a thundering gypsy trail hidden under raked coffee brown skin.

"It ain't yer guilt." She was frightened, too. But her fear was so vastly different. She did not want _him_ to be her enemy. She did not want _him_ to bear her fury when… if…

"I took it freely."

The fury lit across her face, one part kerosene and four parts ire… one part corn husk fuel and all the rest heartbreak. "No ye didn't."

He was behind her, entombing his face in the curve of her neck, one arm tight about her waist. His hands were stronger than hers. Unyielding he pried open her fingers, one by one, until the coin fell out of her hand. It lay on the floor in the dark, and Jack didn't let go of Calypso.

"A wager," she said abruptly.

"Stakes?"

"I win, ye make me a vow of my own choosin'. Ye win, I give ye de bearings for de Isle de Muerta."

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_More to come soon... _


	5. A Wager is Set

**Ch. 5**

**I just finished my last final… YAY! :) So no more long delays for this story, I promise. Thank you so much for sticking with me!**

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_"I wouldn't have imprisoned her," Jack said at last, spinning the coin around his pick-pocket fingers._

_"Always knew ye were daft," Teague said, notably displeased. "It were the only way, boy. When yer dealin' with power of that magnitude…" Teague trailed off, shaking his head. "They done right."_

_"Marvelously uncreative, that," Jack said, comfortably drunk and thereby incautious. "Seems a very __European thing to do, if ye ask me."_

_"Well, I didn't," he growled back, somewhat mollified by the insult to Europe. He hated them, the English most of all._

_"I'd have charmed her like a snake," Jack mused, incoherent ideas mixing with the Arabian folklore he'd been lost in of late._

_"Then ye'd have died like Cleopatra." Teague waved a barmaid over and pulled her close, using the merry clatter of the room as a reason to whisper in her ear. His rough old hand skimmed her cheek and she blushed. Jack smiled to himself. He was the handsome one now, the one the girls looked at from behind their whispering hands. Yet Teague had a tongue smooth as honey and delighted in parading his famed abilities for seduction under Jack's nose, as if to remind him of his place. As if Jack could forget._

_"Listen darlin', how about another pint, eh?" Jack interposed at last, tweaking her nose and drawing an annoyed glare from Teague. The girl turned to Jack and caught her breath, admiring him. She was sure something—bare, bronzed shoulders and irregular wide eyes, too young to be cynical._

_She muttered something in patois, and Jack let a smile play on his lips, enjoying her nervousness. Jack slid his mug into her hand, their fingers meeting briefly. Teague rolled his eyes as she walked away. "Couldn't resist, could ye?"_

_"Resist what? She's a native."_

_"And ye go for English girls, is that it?" Teague asked waspishly._

_"No," Jack replied. "Only one reason ye'd go for an English girl… and that's to ruin her father's name."_

_"Or her husband's!" Teague let out a thick laugh, slapping Jack's thigh. "Aye, that's my boy."_

_Jack commended himself privately for the return of good humor at the table. He decided not to explain why he generally left native girls alone, unless they sought him out of course—(which they often did)—it was proper to treat your own kind better than others. The Spanish girls he liked for dancing and languid loving, the Irish for their passion, and the Dutch girls for their golden hair. And Asians, when they came through, were magnificent conversationalists. But he had never been with an English girl._

_The barmaid returned, mug filled. She smiled shyly as she set it in front of Jack, but he kept his eyes on the table._

_"Listen lad, ye can have her," Teague said grandly. He stood and gave the girl a shove into Jack's lap. She jumped up, and Jack quickly apologized, keeping a gentle grip on her wrist._

_"Sorry love, ye know how these old pirates can be," he flashed his most winning smile. "No harm done, eh?" he tilted her chin up encouragingly. Teague had shifted his attention to a redhead in one corner, and stalked toward her._

_"None at all," the girl said in broken English, stepping a bit closer._

_Jack bent so he could smell her hair, her breath. One hand snaked around her waist, steady, reassuring. He could tell by the way she tensed that she wanted him. He could already envision her soft curves, her dark skin against the inn's bed sheets. He pulled her toward the door._

_"Do ye have a price, love?" he asked softly. They neared Teague, and Jack paused._

_"Five dubrao for da night… but ye needn't worry…"_

_Jack opened her hand and dropped the coins in, closing her fingers around them. "There now. One night and we'll be square." And then, without warning, he pushed her into Teague's arms. With a malicious wink at the older man, Jack said, "I'm not one for another man's cast-offs, ye understand."_

_Teague shook his head at the disrespect. "Aye, maybe not today, Jackie. But mark me words, one day ye'll meet a girl and not care who's been in first, so long as ye can have her last."_

.

* * *

All that she was and all that she wanted to be, all she yearned for, all she desired, tied up in him. Freedom. In a man. The irony choked her for a moment. The very same that had wrought her slavery provided the glimmer of an escape. She must not fail—she would not fail! A faint trailing thread had appeared and she would hold on to it with all her might, if a thousand men had to die and a thousand more brought back from Davy Jones' Locker.

"What be the wager, Dalma?" The coin glimmered back against his coffee brown skin.

Everything between them had changed—when he called her name, she felt the thrill of his power over her. All her limitations had been exposed, all her desperation. She must gain back the upper hand. "We ask my subjects, yes? We ask de ones ye brought to me. Dem be da fair judge between us."

The ease of his smile, the flagrant, physical assurance in his eyes—when had these things become threatening? When had he become her enemy? She was suddenly intensely aware of her own isolation. "What, the very ones as call you Aunt? The ones as worship ye?" He had put distance between them, stood cautiously on the other side of the table. "I think not, Dalma. Downriver is a right fair town, not more than a day on, Tortuga. A proper wager is always accompanied by a good brew, aye?"

Oh, he was clever! So effortlessly seductive… the way he made it sound so easy to leave the bayou, so easy to go about life a free woman. "Done." Her own voice startled her. She hadn't lost that acuity for barter, gained a lifetime ago amongst another tribe, far away, where she had been what humans might call a child. And later, the man with the blue eyes, the one who played pianoforte… she closed her eyes, imagined him behind her, indicating which card she ought to play, the smoke from his pipe a comforting heat against her neck. _Never play yer own hand, my love_, he would whisper. That was before he had known who she was—before he had realized her penchant for cards was a more mysterious talent of far sight. Her own divinity had spelled the beginning of the end, as it always did.

"Ye'll come along, then?"

"Aye. Whyever wouldn't I, Jack de Sparrow?"

He moved out from behind the safety of the table, increased their nearness. "Must be hard to leave yer kingdom…"

"De whole ocean's my kingdom," she returned without thinking. But he was right. She knew now, if ever she escaped this prison, she would miss the bayou. Ache for it, long for it, never be perfectly happy on the water. That had been the true curse of her imprisonment. Here she continually thirsted for the sea; there, she would regret the earth she would leave behind. But Jack understood that. He was a sailor. On the water he thought about making port, rum and women, and sometimes in his better moments, her. And yet when he was with her, his eyes strayed out open windows and down the river, his thoughts bent unintentionally to the sea.

"Then ye'll finally see my ship," he said, eager and excited, boyish as she had first known him.

"Yes, dat dear-bought ship," she said, relaxing after too many moments of fear. She wouldn't tell him that she'd seen the ship already, in many a dream and many a vision. She wouldn't tell him the pictures that had taken shape in her mind, a ship with black sails, torn apart and claimed by the waves… no sense in telling him now.

The water stirred at their approach, salt rose to crest the ripples and the longboat snatched free of its rope, eager. Jack barely slid the oar into the water and it sprang away, away through dark dripping vines and curling roots all contrived to make their path smooth. Black eyes glowed yellow in the shadowy depths of the bayou, and Calypso kept her own eyes fixed on Jack. She did not want the bayou to judge her for leaving, however short her absence would be. She did not want to risk a look behind.

The current had picked up knowingly, and Jack thrust his oar out, using it only to steer away from a few swirling cesspools and hidden rocks. He knew the river well, and Calypso was proud, watching him maneuver the spreading black depths. Proud of his lithe calloused fingers and otherworldly ability to charm the very earth. Everything made way for him, everything bent to aid him. Even her. Yes, even her.

She spread her hands out on the bench, the texture of the wood old and tired, its color sweet, ripe, almost ready to fall from the tree. The air was cold, the sky some feathered velvet train, the wind stripping her naked in her own mind. She could smell the ocean. She could feel it coming.

"Almost there now," Jack said, his voice swallowed and ages away. Did he know? Did he know how many decades she had dreamed of this moment… dreamed of the sea… dreamed of this taste of freedom? He couldn't know. He couldn't possibly understand.

He turned to face her, alive as she had never seen him, drinking in the brusque wildness of the escaping night, immortal in his own way. Black eyes rampant, perilous with pleasure, native lips curled behind a thousand smiles. She was more afraid of him than ever but in rather a different way, in almost a lustful way. Yes, she found exhilaration in this fear. He knew. This was all part of the wager, rushing her on without giving her time to reflect, to look ahead, to prepare herself. If she were her real self, she would gather the North wind and the eastern current, she would bring ice from Patagonia and thunder from Olympus and heap them upon him until he repented in helpless rapture, until he cried her name to the skies in adoration.

"There's the Pearl," he called back. It was almost indistinguishable, sunk low in grease-black horizon, and it seemed small.

Calypso did not care for the ship or any other ever built. Before her was the sea. The river spilled out of its bounds, tumbling over the uneven surface below and verily shouting its reunion in a thousand rhythms. She dove from the longboat into the waves without taking a breath, and at once was cast rough against a sandbar. Water filled her mouth, salt water. It burned down her throat more potent than any liquor ever had, made her at once invincible, delirious. Jack had caught her arm and yanked her back toward the boat and she fought him, clutched at the water, the foam and the mess of the silted inlet.

"Dalma! Ye want to drown? It's high tide, have some sense," he had managed to drag her panting back into the boat along with a few inches of dirty seawater. He was laughing at her. "Thirsty, eh?"

"Ye've no idea," she choked.

The boat thumped against the Pearl and Jack stood, casting a line above and knotting it deftly to the bow. Calypso saw him run his hand down the line of the ship as he climbed the ladder, caressing it hello as one might a lover, soothing it as one might a tamed stallion.

"It's only a ship, Jack."

"Aye, but she's my ship," Jack said. "All mine."

He loved her because he had paid for her with his life, Calypso thought. With his soul.

He reached a hand to help her onto the deck. "Make yerself comfortable. I'll just have a word with me crew."

"Jack!"

He swung around on one foot and the look he gave her made her feel like the only person alive. "Aye?"

"Before nightfall of da second day," she said through clenched teeth. "I have to be back."

He came closer, serious, sorry for her. "I'll have ye back. Don't worry." And then he flipped his best paper-blank smile on the way to the helm.

* * *

_More to come soon... and I really do mean soon this time! :) _


	6. All's Fair

**Chapter 6. **

**I was going to post this last night, but got distracted by the midnight showing of Narnia... :) This story will have 8 chapters total, so 2 more to go! Thank you all for the beautiful reviews and for reading, you are lovely. Enjoy!**

* * *

Tortuga was a disappointment.

The smells, the noise, the torrid clinging heat of late afternoon—all of these things were ancient history to Calypso, from the stench of the docks to the lethargic predictability of hung over men. She was repulsed by her own worshippers—repulsed that this was the world she had been dreaming of since her captivity began.

"It's only Tortuga," Jack reminded her, slant-eyed and comforting, one arm about her waist to guide her through the narrow winding streets. "This ain't the world, Dalma. Just the shoe-scrappin's of it."

She smiled, feeling the dried henna on her cheekbones tighten. Her scalp shone with sweat beneath the braids and she missed the cool shade of her bayou. It was only Jack's unquenchable spirit that held her here. Only her fascination with his marked brown skin. Only her knowledge that he could be the one to set her free. "Where ye be takin' me, witty Jack?"

"To the world's end, darlin'," he chimed, his eye caught by a passing vendor. "Oy! Mate!" The vendor stopped and displayed a basket of bleached crab shells. "Care for a souvenir?"

Calypso looked at the shells with pity, aching for the power to revive them. Her fingers skated over the edge of the basket. "Ain't no ordinary shells, these," the vendor said at once. "These are magic. Tell the future, they do."

"Do dey?" Calypso smiled, furtive and derisive. "Well den, Jack, we'll have to take dem. I know how ye love magic."

"Money," the vendor muttered hungrily. "Money first. These are worth more than a drink, they are."

"Ah," Jack said, widening his eyes and broadening his shadow around the graying man. He leaned in as if hatching a conspiracy. "I knew ye'd say that, mate. Thing is, first I laid eyes on ye, I knew ye were a clever man. A man with an eye for a bargain. Am I right?"

A muscle tightened in the vendor's jaw, but he remained silent.

"Ye see, mate, I'm in possession (or near enough) of the bearings to a fabulous treasure," Jack lowered his voice, glanced around. "Just imagine the gold, the jewels… all practically mine for the taking. And if ye show kindness to me now, well, I'd be prepared to share this all with ye."

"Treasure, ye say?" The vendor studied Jack's irregular dark face, and the woman at his side. "And how do I know ye'll keep yer word?"

"Mate, don't ye recognize me?"

The vendor's forehead wrinkled slightly, awkwardly. "Should I?"

Jack leaned back in exasperation, shaking his head. "He don't recognize me, Dalma."

"Shame it is, witty Jack."

"Jack?" The vendor repeated, as though he had suddenly remembered. "Of course! Jack! Jack…?"

"_Captain_ Jack."

"Captain Jack what?"

"Captain Jack Sparrow," Calypso put in suddenly. "One of de more feared and respected privateers in all de colonies. Ye'd be wise to heed him—he never yet failed to find a treasure he sought."

The vendor, momentarily under the spell of Calypso's words, handed over the basket with a bemused look. "Well bless me, but I beg yer pardon sir and lady. Captain Jack Sparrow. Won't forget that name easy, no sir. I'll expect a reward…"

"And ye'll get one, mate. After all, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." Jack stumbled over the new title a bit, but matched it with a wicked grin. He quite liked it.

"Did I hear something about a treasure?"

Jack turned to see the vendor scuttling off and another man approaching. A big, powerful tree of a man, skin burnished with sun and age, eyes shadowed under a wide felt hat.

"Hector Barbossa," Calypso said with mischievous recognition.

"Calypso," the man said, but the word was almost a question, half-whispered and in awe.

Jack didn't know why, but he felt cold in this man's presence, doubtful and intimidated. Why did his Dalma look at the man that way, as though remembering old pleasures? Why did she touch him that way, beneath his chin and down his chest, too familiar for comfort?

"Dalma?" he murmured.

"A former lover, Jack de Sparrow," she said with sinful candor. "One of de men who come to my door after ye told all my secrets de last time."

"Ah," Jack said with a painful smirk. "Barbossa, ye said?"

"Aye," came the man's voice, harrowing as bones scraping each other. "Never would have expected to see ye here, goddess, in such a dung hill as this." His smile was twice as sinister as his voice, and Jack thought he would like to kill him and then get the hell away from his body.

"Jack bring me here," Calypso explained, aware of the tension gathering in the narrow street. "A wager he set, and we come to settle it."

"Then allow me to be of service to ye, make sure he plays fair and all that."

"Of course, of course," Calypso replied, burying her mirth deep as in soil.

* * *

"She's playing ye, lad," The man called Barbossa slurred. Night had come to Tortuga, and with night, drink.

Jack narrowed his eyes, wishing he could hide their expression better. Wishing he, like those painted whores, could disguise their honesty behind powder and kohl. "Actually, I'm playin' her, mate. But thanks for the warning."

"Ye playin' the goddess herself?" Barbossa scoffed, downing another swallow and focusing on Calypso, across the room entangled in conversation. "She's always got a card up her sleeve. Always got some hidden plan. Mark me words."

"Marked and dually dismissed, thanks," Jack muttered. "I reckon I've known her longer than ye."

"Longer?" the words held a thinly veiled suggestion and a noticeable glance beneath Jack's naval. "Doubtful."

Jack closed his eyes, aching to be aboard his ship, alone, with the wind in his face and the horizon out before him. He ached for solitude, freedom from this smoky closed room and its company.

"So, yer a Pirate?"

Jack's head snapped up, and too late he tugged his shirtsleeve down over that hateful mark. Gods above, would he never be free of it? "Aye, when the mood takes me," he covered his irritation in bravado. "I been many things in me short life."

"Ye got a ship to go with that brand, lad?" Barbossa's voice was dripping with arrogance. "Many a young sailor would fancy himself a pirate, yet is naught but a common thief."

Jack swallowed. "I have a ship. And I'm no thief." His eyes glinted. "Though I do a speck of murder now and again."

To his surprise and dismay, Barbossa clapped him on the back much as Teague might have. "Good boy. Just what I wanted to hear." He drained his mug silently and called for another, his eyes bleary and yet, alert. Not to be gainsaid, Jack did the same. "What be this wager ye have with her?"

"It's personal."

"So I suspected. But I can help ye win."

"And why would ye do that?"

"Me own sense of fair play. Men have to help each other against the fairer sex, aye?"

_Odd_, Jack thought, _I don't exactly think of me Dalma as a woman. Rather a force of nature._ "It may come as somethin' of a surprise to you, Mr. Barbossa, but I'm fair capable of winning a wager on me own."

"And it may come as something of a surprise to you, _Captain_ Sparrow, but no one wins a wager in this inn without my consent."

So she was playing him. Even before they settled in for supper she'd chosen her gambits… selecting those who owed her a favor to cushion her success. Jack could imagine the task she would require of him, and like cold water down his back, thought of Teague. He'd surely be dead if Teague knew how fast and loose he played with the fate of the Brethren Court. "What's in it for ye, mate?"

"I heard something about treasure," Barbossa reminded him, and Jack saw he had emptied his newly filled mug yet again. Impressed despite himself, he struggled to catch up.

"It's a fool's hope of a treasure," Jack said finally, his head swimming. "Very few men who'd even believe it exists."

"And yer one of them, aren't ye?"

Jack turned out a sloppy grin. "Mate, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. I bed goddesses and betray their secrets. I believe in far too much for me own good."

Barbossa nursed yet another drink. "So do I, Jack. So do I." He swirled the liquid moodily before downing it. "Ye want my help or not? All I want is a share of the treasure, if indeed it exists."

Everyone wanted their share. Everyone wanted to believe. Jack's head ached. "It's a deal then," he said dimly, thinking with guilt he'd rather the treasure didn't exist, after all.

"Good lad," Barbossa said as he sauntered toward Calypso, his gait remarkably steady. He placed a hand on her, caressing her shadowy skin, and whispered something in her ear. She turned and her gaze fell on Jack, piercing, questioning. Did she suspect? No, no, Barbossa was playing her now, fawning over her, assuring her of his loyalty. A deck of cards appeared in his hand and he gestured back towards Jack. Calypso closed her eyes briefly and then nodded. She looked so strange here, Jack thought. Diminished, vulnerable. He should never have brought her out of the Bayou. He should never have broken that spell.

They sat. Cards were shuffled, dealt.

"Thought ye said cards were for dividin' wealth and not telling destinies," Jack said, forming the words with difficulty.

"We _are_ dividing wealth," came her fleet reply.

Barbossa smiled, and one of his teeth was blue-black, rotten.

Three cards were laid. A jack of diamonds, nine of spades, and four of clubs. The jack had a bent corner and the nine, a smudge of grease.

Jack studied his hand through a blur, gathered them up, and took a drink. Calypso traced hers as though reforming their numbers. Jack rolled up his sleeves, noticing her bare arms. All's fair in love and war, he thought, taking another swallow, relishing the bitterness of the drink. All's fair in piracy.

Calypso dropped two cards on the table, and Barbossa handed her another pair. Whether it were a tell or a ruse, Jack didn't know, but the corner of her mouth curved up slightly. Under the table, Jack felt her foot snake past his and caress Barbossa's leg. He felt sick.

For himself, he dropped no cards. He couldn't remember what was in his hand.

"This is it, then," Barbossa said. Jack thought it strange a wager of this import could be settled so easily, so quickly. He didn't even know if he believed in fate. Casually, Barbossa laid the fourth card. Queen of hearts.

"Ah!" Calypso cried, splaying her hand on the table. "Care to beat dat, Jack de Sparrow?"

Jack flipped his cards over one by one, scarcely able to make out their marks. Calypso's face fell, Barbossa's grin deepened. He had won. He had both queen of diamonds and king of hearts.

"There it is, Dalma," he said thickly, unable to pull his eyes off the queen of hearts, the card that had marked his winning. "Fate's decided. Give up the bearings."

Calypso looked between Barbossa and Jack, an unfathomable emotion settling in her eyes and forehead. Barbossa began to laugh. "Cards are a man's game, see," he said, leaning forward. "And more than that, a mortal's game."

Calypso swept her garment back and stood. "De bearin's will be yers, witty Jack." But her fury was roused. She knew he had cheated. Somehow she knew.

Jack struggled to stand, swaying slightly, watching as she vanished into the night. She was in his power, she needed him still. He would find her at the Pearl, and the journey back to the bayou would be stony and hellish. And he would never forget that look in her eyes—the look of betrayal.

"I'll expect ye to keep yer word," Barbossa remarked beside him, sober as a rail.

"Aye," Jack muttered, heading for the door. Barbossa placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Ye won't get off so easy. I'm comin' with ye."

* * *

_More to come soon... _


	7. Death's Island

**Ch. 7.**

**When I said before there were going to be 8 chapters, that was a lie. There are going to be ten. Ten chapters. So, three more to go from here. Hugs and kisses to my faithful readers whom I adore and dedicate this to… thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, I love the conversations I've had with you all! It's delightful to connect in so many ways. Cheers, and enjoy!**

* * *

"_The treasure of Isle de Muerta?" _

_Jack had never seen Teague so impressed. But rather than make him feel proud, Teague's reaction made him feel fearful and wicked. Like a grave robber. A half-smoked cigar hung out of Teague's mouth, the smell familiar and comforting, like the room they stood in. A thousand candles hung overhead, and every now and then Jack felt a sting of pain as hot wax dripped down. He had known all this before. His restlessness bred and grew fast here. _

"_Boy, I know ye're daft and fearless and out drink me to boot, but ye've crossed the line this time, thinking about that place." _

_Jack didn't believe in lines anymore. He had read Dante. _

"_It's not what ye think and not what ye want. Haven't ye learned anything in all yer blunders, Jack?"_

_His blunders? Of course there had been one or two unplanned lapses… but on the whole, he had done well for himself. Teague ought to be proud. Without him, Teague would still be a common drunk on a forgotten coast, chatting with beggar boys. Nothing ventured, nothing gained—wasn't that what Teague had always told him? _

"_I don't care if Calypso herself made ye a promise, boy. Isle de Muerta is cursed. Forbidden. There are some things ye just don't question." _

_Were there? Jack questioned everything. And Teague was dishonoring his god, freedom. He had a map and a ship and a crew. His own cleverness had won those. He would go where he bloody pleased. He would love whom he chose and live as he liked. He was a pirate, and he had the brand to prove it. _

"_I know what yer thinking, boy. Why listen to a dried up old sailor like me? What could I possibly know about it?" Teague shifted in the chair he had grown into since settling at the Cove. "There were a time ye wanted nothing but bread to fill your stomach, lad. Maybe ye were right all along. Wild treasures and risks like this…risks that can't be calculated… that ain't living. Listen to me now, if ye feel an ounce of gratitude." _

"_This isn't about gratitude." He had already drawn on Calypso's wrath for this treasure. There really was no going back, no matter how Teague might chide him. _

_Teague was still for a moment, realizing how serious Jack was. There was so little he could say. He had never played this card with Jack before, and he did not want to now._

_This was a card played with partners and subordinates, not Jack. And yet, this was his last defense. "If ye go after the treasure, you and I are done. No more runs, no more cargo, no more voyages. Ye understand? I wash me hands of ye, if that be yer choice." Jack would surely recant now. No treasure could be worth that loss, could it? Jack's life had been built out of Teague's hand. _

_Jack straightened his jacket and adjusted his hat—the hat that named him Captain. "Are ye saying ye want me to bow to ye—obey ye without question—or ye'll toss me back in the gutter where I came from?" Jack's eyes gleamed like a cornered animal's. Teague didn't know how to explain that error of Jack's deduction. He had never known Jack to resent his background before. _

"_I'm trying to save ye, boy," Teague said at last, quietly. _

"_Ye were the one who made me believe in freedom!" Jack exploded, overturning the table before them, dispersing its contents to the floor. A candle sputtered and went out. "Ye were the one who told me bread wasn't enough. So it's all right for you but not me, eh, Teague? Too much that the boy's become a man and has plans of his own?" Jack shook his head slowly, and then turned his back on Teague, heading for the door._

"_Jack!" Teague brayed after him, imperious and foreboding, "Don't ye dare go!" _

_Jack kept walking. The last Teague saw was the flickering shadow of the door as it slammed behind him. He was gone. Just like that._

_Teague found himself slumped forward, his face tickled by alien wetness. His throat was so tight he could barely make out the few words left to utter, words that were an echo of his failure: "Don't go."_

* * *

Winter had come to the bayou, winter more determined than any Calypso had known since making this place her home. The serpentine arms of the trees waved naked and feeble above, black against the white drear sky. Wrapped in a blanket, Calypso sat on the porch and paid homage to the sky for matching her mood. Blank linen clouds skittered by every so often, eager to vanish beyond the horizon. Calypso was grimly satisfied, watching them. They would pass over his head. They would shade his inhuman eyes and disrupt his endeavors. Abruptly, Calypso stood and went to her fire inside, scraping coals out under a pot for coffee. She licked one finger and laid it against an ember, listening for the wisping shriek of her skin. Ah, there it was. Too faint to get proper news from. Sucking her burn, she retreated to the marked table, upon which a basket of bleached crab shells sat. They looked forlorn, silent. No voice left in them, probably. She hadn't touched them since returning to the bayou months before… but now, as a cold wind shivered through the wide cracks of the walls and the coffee smell grew stronger around her, she was interested.

First she laid them out in proper shapes, claws to bodies. Then she scattered them on the wood. She liked the noise they made striking her table. She liked the smell they carried. Again she cast them, like dice this time. Her lips formed the word 'Jack' unconsciously. Dice and cards, coffee and ale, the swamp on a warm day or the laughter of her people: all of these things reminded her of Jack.

The pot began to shake and she made her slow way to it, swirling the liquid. She was so thirsty. A pile of culled _Salvia _stood near the door; it had kept her trapped in hallucinations and visions for days without respite. Her teeth were stained from beetle nuts and tobacco; her hair was matted and unkempt. She had begun to crave human death. Too few hours of freedom had been followed by weeks of dizzying despair; she had never known before how wretched it was to be trapped here, she had forgotten both ocean and land once, and the forgetting had been her savior. Now she remembered, and suffered.

She reached for the shells again, reverent as though they were the coins of betrayal, and scattered them. Looked at them. Bit her lip, unsure. Pondered them. Sipped her coffee, too hot. Too much to hope for, too much to believe it was. A few seconds ago the shells had meant nothing to her. Now they meant everything—now they told her a secret she couldn't quite grasp. Coincidence? Mistake? Trick?

The moments ticked by, bringing clarity. Her existence hinged on belief, and believe she would. The shells had spoken true.

He was coming back.

* * *

He came alone, no boat, barefoot, a careworn, cast-aside doll of a man. Her eyes alone would not have recognized him. Triumph died on her lips, the bitterness she had been chewing as cud vanished from her mouth. She was mother, aunt, she was Tia Dalma. He was her child and he had returned. Almost dead, he fell against the ladder and stayed there, immobile. The swamp was very quiet, and Calypso thought it right, though the swamp had never, never been quiet before.

She tripped down her own ladder, training her heart to be steady and her hands to be gentle as she pulled him into her lap, afraid he would fall to pieces in her arms. Yes, he still breathed. Gods above, he was broken. She held him blindly, feeling his warmth too faint and his soul too still. His face and shoulders were blistered with deep burns; his back, a smattering of whip-lashes and other, more gruesome injuries; bits of glass and wood still clung there in the mess. Around both eyes, blue-green marks showed from a beating and his face was tinged yellow. "Oh Jack," she whispered without thinking. "Oh…"

"Dalma?" he was awake, in some sense or another. "I lost it. They took me ship."

"Shh… Jack, hush chil', hush dear one."

"They took me treasure… left me…"

"Don' think about dat now, Jack, jus' rest…"

"A ship came… saved me."

"Aye, Jack de Sparrow, a ship always come."

"I made a deal… for passage." His mouth was parched, his voice, a grim shadow of itself. And his chest heaved as he spoke those last words, he began to shake deeply, weeping, though his face remained dry.

"It's all right, Jack," Calypso said again, wanting to envelope him, wanting to surround him completely like the velvet black soil of the bayou. "What be da bargain dis time?"

He didn't answer now, just continued to shudder, drawing his knees up toward his chest like a tortured child might. He flinched when she caressed his face. And Calypso thought, there were some bargains no man should have to make. Some bargains that eclipsed even the loss of one's soul.

Calypso lifted him easily in her arms with the strength of the sea. With only her toes she gripped the ladder and carried Jack up, up to the wooden floor, up to her house where burnt coffee sat on old coals and bleached crab bones adorned the aging table.

* * *

He survived.

Another countdown to departure. Another hourglass running out of sand too quickly for Calypso. He would live; thus, he would leave. He would leave her again. She should not have tended his wounds with such diligence—should not have employed those spells and herbs and charms with such fervor. She should not have put forth the old strength or given up the carefully staved magic for him. She did not want to watch him leave again.

There was a bed in the hut now.

Lovemaking did not teach you a person's body the way tending them in long illness did. Calypso thought, that was the real consummation of love. She knew his body like her own now, and the places on it that still gave him pain. The places that had been the longest to heal. Even his mind was laid open to her briefly.

"Ye've wandered a long time, witty Jack," she said to his blank stare.

In all his time in her care, he had remained more or less silent. Now he spoke, his voice human again, though deeper, huskier than it had been once. "And now I've decided to forget it all."

"Not even I have de power to grant ye dat request."

He smiled. The smile was brittle and enigmatic, unforgiving. Calypso felt herself shiver a little. "I don't need magic to leave the past in its place."

She couldn't resist. She wanted him to need her. "Maybe ye need magic to remedy de past, aye?"

"Remedy the past?" his tone turned unsteady. "Nothing to be done, I expect… except to start over." And she saw, for all the marks across his skin, he was still smooth. Clouding fear and regret, shame and perhaps despair; none of these destroyed him as they should have. It wasn't quite fair… wasn't quite right. He had mingled too much with magic and legends, with things best left in the storybooks. She wanted to pull him further into her world, keep him there. He had come so far already.

"Der is a way…" she was whispering, sliding against him on the bed she had made for him. "A way for revenge, a way to get back dat which belong to ye…"

"How?" he asked curiously. His head was tilted to one side, and the entrancing grace of his movements had changed, stiffened slightly with his wounds, made him awkward and almost comical.

"Wit magic of course," she said, leaning closer. She wanted to kiss him now, though he seemed afraid of her lips. Pride stung, she brushed his mouth lightly before pulling away. "De men dat betrayed ye—how will ye pay dem back? Should dey get away wit what dey did? De marks dey left on ye?"

Jack's eyes sank to the floor.

"De legendary Jack Sparrow always triumphs, aye? Ye're not afraid, are ye, Jack?"

"No," he said, almost a question.

She reached into the folds of her skirt for the object she trusted to draw them back together. The object that would remind Jack all she had done for him, all she had made him. The object that might make him stay. Another gamble, but magic was her strength and would be on her side.

"A compass?" he looked disappointed. "I've got one, or did have, thanks."

"Not jus' any compass, Jack," she said sharply. Oh the bitterness of faded belief! "Dis compass is magic." Unable to resist, she neared his mouth again. He did not flinch this time, but bent toward her slightly.

"Magic?"

They were sharing a breath. There was only a sliver between them… golden and irreversible, the sliver of enchantment and the turning wheel of destiny, the third risk. Calypso felt the fine slender hairs on her neck rise; he was new, reborn on her lips, tentative and inexperienced as a youth. He was desperate to believe, desperate to repaint the past, erase the pain. Such it was to be human. Calypso forgot sometimes that they couldn't appreciate the bad the same way they did the good. Just as well, for her anyway. "Magic. What secrets lie in yer heart, Jack de Sparrow… what yearnings are der?"

He swallowed deep, swallowing back an ocean of answers.

"Can ye sort de tangle and pursue it clear, Jack? Dis compass give ye what no man has—de truth. What ye want most, what yer heart believes. Points de way, de path before yer feet."

"It sounds too grand a thing for me…"

"Calypso gives gifts to that whom she chooses."

"And what would ye ask in return?"

"Does it matter? I offer ye de world! Yer heart's desire, Jack…"

He laid his head back against the loose cotton that her people had woven for him, unaware of the hours they had gathered round the hut, mournful and waiting, crying out to their gods in strange tongues, begging for his life. He ran his hand along the threaded texture of the blanket, dyed indigo by the swamp's harvest. "I've bargained away me body and me soul," he finally whispered. "Nothing could be worse than that, could it?"

* * *

_More to come soon..._


	8. Fancy and Fools

**Chapter 8.**

**Thank you so my dear readers... thanks for the reviews and encouragement, and thanks for being such lovely friends in the process. :) Enjoy!**

* * *

"_Sure as ye want to try this route, lad?" _

_Jack looked up at his first mate, irritated afresh by how Barbossa still called him 'lad' as though he were still a child. "Captain's orders." _

"_Aye, aye," Barbossa nodded, stroking his jaw thoughtfully and with the restrained energy that marked him among the stunted and brutish sailors they had gathered for their venture. "Ye've got the bearings and me to thank for it. Half and half, see?"_

"_One oughtn't to divide treasure one hasn't got one's hands on yet," Jack muttered, thinking back to the days Teague brought him books to read. Life without Teague was noticeably flat. _

"_Just hear me out," Barbossa said with an effort at patience. "I've been sailin' these waters fifteen years longer than ye, boy. My advice is disinterested. You try those straights, you risk losing the wind and breaking on the shoals, and the ship's still in sight of the English from there."_

"_This is the course I've chosen," Jack said, biting down the insult to his pride. Deep down, he knew Barbossa was right. Skirting the coast of Cuba and taking the trade winds South would save time as well as ensure relative anonymity for the treasure-seekers. But Jack couldn't resist taking the longer route through Nassau in the hopes of seeing Teague, whose cargo runs frequently took him past that port. How Teague would cringe and falter when he saw Jack's crew, newly outfitted and ready for adventure! How proud he would be… and how sorry for his last damning words. _

_Barbossa still stood in the shadows, glaring out at him from beady eyes. "Lad, ye're treading dangerous waters, ignoring well-given advice from an old sailor." _

"_And ye're treading them yerself, mate, by questioning me a third time." Jack thrust down the map he had been studying and paced his legs apart, wishing he were a bit taller. "I've got my reasons." _

"_Reasons ye won't share with yer nearest and dearest?" Barbossa asked, raising an eyebrow. He was a master of intimidation, he was, and Jack knew it. _

"_Ye're the nearest I've got," Jack returned with a winsome smile, changing his tone. "And while I respect yer professional opinion, it's my ship and my venture, and you'd do well to remember that." _

_Barbossa hesitated, and then leaned in again, removing his hat in a gesture of equality. "Listen Jack, some of the men—myself included—have got warrants out. Sailing past the English fort with a jolly roger is not only foolish, it's risking a lot of lives. Ye understand?" _

_Jack spun on his heel, facing the bleak brown glass of the window. Understand? Jack smiled slightly. Barbossa arguments only made him more determined to have his way. _

"_Afraid of them, are ye?" he taunted mildly. "Afraid of death?" _

"_Avoiding death ain't fear, whatever ye say," Barbossa growled. "Ye'll find a ship full of deserters—or worse— if ye don't rethink yer course."_

* * *

Nothing worse? Nothing worse than that, he had said, and he had been wrong. He was so often wrong, and yet he was himself, and that was much too right for the world. Calypso almost laughed at him before she changed her mind. The laughter would speak nothing but envy, and he already knew her envy.

"We have an accord."

His hand was still strong as she shook it. She was somewhat perturbed by that, by his contradictory strength. For the thousandth time, Calypso found herself wondering where he had come from, who had born him, where he had engendered the magic that clung to him.

"Do ye think me a fool for giving in to ye so easy?"

A fool? Jack Sparrow? Calypso licked her lips, thinking that might be his saving grace. If he weren't a trifle naïve, he would be Poseidon himself. "I tink ye everyting dat is wild and free, Jack de Sparrow. And dis compass is yers now, as promised." She slid it into his hands, catching her breath a little. Why was she suddenly afraid?

Jack turned the object over languidly in his hands, a little sweat grasping at his neck and chest, evidence of long fever. He smelled of the lye she had bathed him with. It was strange to see him clean.

"Open it," she said at last, surprised by her own impatience.

He did. The needle flung itself back and forth a bit, as it was used to, and then began to slow. It came to an indecisive stop as Calypso looked down. Dead South. And too far left to be pointing to her.

"The Pearl, I expect," Jack muttered, snapping it shut. Casually, he set the compass down beside his bed and closed his eyes, insulated from everything, drowning in ideas. Calypso remained still for a moment, trying to grasp what had happened. Trying to bring herself forward into the moment Jack now inhabited. The compass had not pointed to her. The compass had pointed back to the sea. The compass had betrayed her.

"The last time I left here, Dalma, I hurt you."

Calypso rose abruptly, curling her nails into her fists, feeling them break through the skin of her hand in disquiet. A dim feathered sunset laced through the window, which she had covered in wax paper to keep out the mosquitoes. The swamp was very, very loud tonight, and Calypso found herself wishing it would hush, just this once. The swamp did not obey her, and she did not really expect it to. It was not the ocean.

"I told meself over and over that I wasn't sorry, that it was all right for a pirate to act that way." He hadn't opened his eyes. "Fact is, I was sorry. More sorry than I could say. I didn't want to cheat you, and I didn't want to leave you."

The hairs on Calypso's neck stood straight up and she plunked her feet into the floor like weights, overcome. Was she gratified or infuriated afresh? She couldn't quite tell.

"I thought maybe you'd admire me for being… ye know… able to gain my point. But now I see that was foolish. I got my desserts, I did."

"I forgive ye, Jack," she whispered suddenly, rejoining him.

"Why?" he asked.

In response, she pressed her body against his and let her hands wander across his face with more gentleness than she had ever felt before. "To err is human, Jack."

"To forgive…" _Divine_. He didn't finish his sentence. She found herself inexplicably mesmerized by the uneven coarse texture of his skin, the desperate look that came into his eyes now and then, the way he ignored his pain and wound his fingers into her snarled hair. Like a bracing autumn wind he shook at her clothes, undressing her, flinging her leaves to the ground with careless and delicious abandon. But he was different this time… guiding her hands, licking away a tear from her cheek (where had the tear come from? Surely she had not gone soft…), measured and older, the expression of unvoiced experience in the face of survival. And she found with a shock that he was _using_ her. Using her body, using her nearness to salve his own hurts. She, a goddess, being used like a common whore.

Calypso laughed, and Jack smothered it with his mouth. She fought him, and he pinned her arms over her head. But she did not struggle long… in all his fascinating youth he had been hers, and now in his dark dangerous manhood she was his. She had been waiting for this day. She had been waiting for him to take her like the bayou itself would—inevitable and pounding, black as the soil and almost ruined with hedonism. The sea itself could not have caused her to writhe so. She had slaves a plenty: men who crawled back up the river if she so much as whispered a plea to the moon. And she had more than that in power over hearts and minds even from her exile. But she herself was a slave of passion, wasn't she? Giving up revenge, giving up her much-deserved triumph at the whim of the pretty black eyes that had lately caught her fancy?

Their clothing had marked their separation; their naked skin met in a frenzied fast way, tired of the fabric. He was doing things to her she hadn't known he was capable of… he was challenging her, taunting her on to retaliate. And his body was still stronger than hers.

"Ye be a candle, Jack de Sparrow," she breathed incoherently, needing to open her mouth and feeling the surge of blood sweep through her head. "And ye'll burn out if ye go on much longer like dis."

"Don't speak," he ordered, his forehead at her naval, "Don't say another word."

Silenced by his forcible touch rather than his command, Calypso realized they were still on the bed. There was no sharp prickling wood beneath her and no cloying sap. There was him, only him, sating himself in her.

She was what the humans would have called brazen—it must be so. For she let him again and again, long after her desire had cooled. Touch was really all she knew in the way of healing.

* * *

_I move and sigh with the breezes, with the pine fragrance and the warm wet grass; I ache and shiver with the dark noise and the new knowledge, the evil. All is bleak, all is changed. All is mystery. And the sun has changed, and begun to hide. I flit up and am thrown back against the earth, which weathers in clime of haggard blue, jagged through the rich black water around us. _

_Fear has caused us to shrink._

_We are smaller, minute by minute, drawing into ourselves, blending into each other, desperate to be surrounded. _

_We are tamer, hour by hour, complacent as we wait, knowing we have had our strength removed. Drink deep the water, sink into the soil and forget, forget… Stretch the arms away, cover the new skin with tougher bark, search out the minerals with supple facetious fingers. There was a thing called beauty, but it has shattered. Now there are tiny fragments of it, all about, too small to notice much. A shard came and pierced me, poisoned me, penetrated me. Sweet for an instant, tragic for eternity. _

_How can I ask him to go on? Can I not draw the curtain on him, put him away, gently break him in two and wipe him clean?_

Pink feathered dawn swept across the sky, breaking through the bare black arms of the trees with jagged irregularity. Frost clung to the bark and the wax-paper window of Calypso's house. Quiet she stood in the corner with a few matches, gathering her pile of coals together. She could hear the rhythmic sound of Jack's breathing from here, though the sight of him stretched across the bed was hidden.

She was inconsistent to the highest degree. She knew this. Knew not to trust herself or the invariant emotions that ruled her as human. Knew what it might cost her to give in now. Knew, and couldn't find it in herself to care this morning.

Freedom had suddenly retreated from importance. Maybe it was fear that drove its glimmer away, maybe it was long understanding and acceptance of her fate. But what was freedom—what would it mean to her now, after all this time, if she destroyed all she loved in the process? Maybe she had hung away that skin forever… maybe, maybe, she could learn to be human, fully human. Maybe Jack could teach her.

She found her eyes watered with hot tears, thinking on her long dream. The dream had been ever entwined with the man—Davy Jones was his name—who in a century past swore an oath of love before her. And (why deny it now?) she had loved him back. Weakened and humbled herself for his sake. Made him into a god worthy of her. Lost him in the heat of indecision. Soon after her binding she had sought for him in eagerness to explain and be forgiven, and not finding him, set her heart against him. Giving up the dream of her freedom meant at long last giving up the dream of him as well…

She felt like Aladdin, who had caught the jinn and then realized the one thing he'd been wanting for so long couldn't be accomplished with a wish. Jack made it seem easy to change her mind— just looking at him brought to mind his tangled thread of a life, the bridges he burned and the disasters he had come into. Asking him to betray the very brand on his skin would destroy him. And if all her reasoning didn't measure up, the bleached crab bones spoke clear that her time had not come yet.

"Mornin', love," Jack said, surprising her with half a smile. Wrapped in a blanket, he sank onto a chair and sat hunched over the table, toying with the shells absently. Over the fire, Calypso shifted her pot of water and sprinkled a few herbs over it. The steam was soothing on her skin, the smell fragrant and peaceful.

She liked being human in these moments.

"Ye're up," she finally observed, sliding a mug of tea towards him. She poured another for herself and sat down. "Swagger back in yer step, even."

"A fellow can't lie abed forever."

He meant he couldn't stay _here_ forever. "Restless already?"

His face was soft, paler than usual. "Always restless. Ye're the same. How you've managed here this long…"

"A miracle?" She sipped her tea. "Where will ye go now, Jack?"

He pulled up the compass. "To reclaim me own."

"Jack, we all tried to warn ye 'bout dat treasure. If de men won it, der will be no reclaiming yer ship from dem."

Jack swung his finger around the rim of his mug, and his action seemed almost menacing to Calypso. "Ye're the one who gave me the compass to begin with, Dalma. Now ye're saying I shouldn't follow it?"

"Ye still owe me for it, witty Jack."

"Ah yes… my latest bargain. What's it to be then?" Jack steeled himself for the fate of the Brethren Court. On the outside he could not have appeared cooler, more indifferent. Timing was everything in Calypso's world.

Calypso found betraying all her plans easy in the end. She would regret it later, undoubtedly. But for now it was easy. "Stay with me. A year and a day, Jack. Dat's all I ask of ye."

A long silence occurred during which Calypso realized three things very quickly. The first was that no matter how long or how fervently she tried, she would never be fully human. The second was how terribly lonely and angry that knowledge made her. And the third was that, for all she had thought her request a gift that spared the Court, it sounded to Jack like an interminable prison sentence. He was so wild.

Congenially, Jack took a drink of his tea, holding his mug as though it were ale. He chuckled a little. "Ye can't be serious, darlin'."

_Don't call me darlin', as though I were one of yer half-crown strumpets._ "I'm quite serious."

Jack tossed the compass across the table. "Then the bargain is off. I don't want it after all."

"We already shook on it, Jack de Sparrow. Ye have no choice now."

He had tensed imperceptibly, ready for flight. She could feel his racing heartbeat through the beams of the floor. "Ye can't ask this of me, Dalma… you wouldn't… I can't stay here."

"Ye can and ye will."

"It'd kill me!" he burst out, unaware of how his words hurt her and the bayou itself in timeless ways. He had neared the door. "I'm sorry, Dalma, I really am. I can't stay."

"Jack." One year and one day—was it so much to ask? So terrible a price for his heart's desire?

He paused in front of the door, feeling the walls close in even now, aching for the smell of the sea. He saw she was holding a pistol—his pistol—and aiming at him. "I have to leave," he whispered desperately.

"Den I'm going to make ye keep yer bargain de only way I can figure how."

He turned the handle of the door. She fired the pistol.

* * *

_More soon..._


	9. Odysseus

**Chapter 9.**

**Second to last chapter here… just one more to go! A lot of hugs and sweets to my dear readers. muah!! :)  
**

* * *

_Grind me into the road_

_Make me a part of a journey_

_Paint me into your nearest dreams_

_Your onerous load_

_Or your dusk-bent road_

_With all the shattered sparks of beauty_

_Soiling, sinking, slithering down_

_And growing up_

_In myriad salvatious songs_

The gun fired twice and then was silent. Death looked around the room indifferently, and thumbed his nose at Calypso. He did not dare claim prey without her consent.

If ever there were a moment of regret, a moment of steaming, breath-catching regret, Calypso knew it well. It came in the form of decision—sharp and irreversible, the rock face of her own uncertainty. So it had been with the man Davy Jones, for whom her regret sang loudest.

But this regret was filled with malice and guilt because she knew she should not have shot Jack—should not have made it so obvious whether he would live or die. She should have put forth the old magic and woven nets about him, nets of desire or nets of wisdom, riddles and hints and whispers of immortality, threaded silver over his coffee brown skin until he was buried there with her, unable to leave…

Too late. The wild animal would never be tamed now.

Calypso caught him as he crumpled forward, thinking of the weeks she had spent healing the body she had now broken. A year and a day it would take this time, exactly as it should.

The compass fell open in his lap and Calypso watched the needle waver and then point directly toward her. Yes, he wanted her, needed her most of all. "Glad to see ye've forgiven me so quickly, Jack," she said with an out of place grin.

He forced a little laugh, his face rigid. "I'll never forgive ye for this, Dalma. Never, never, never. But I love ye, all right?"

"Fair 'nuf," she replied, noticing the way his teeth set and a breath whistled through. Love… such a strange word to come from his sinful mouth. "Is de pain bad?"

"Not at all," he grunted, taking his defeat with uncanny ease. "Can barely feel it, actually."

The blood had soaked the front of his shirt before Calypso managed to press her palm against the two wounds. His skin was drained of color and his eyes became glassy. "I'll heal ye," she whispered into his ear.

"It'd be safer for ye if ye let me die," Jack remarked, his voice beginning to slur. "Or have ye forgotten Odysseus?"

Calypso bit down on her tongue and her bile. How cruel he was! "I forgot ye read so much," she managed to say, deftly tearing fabric from her skirt to bind him. She would carry him to the bed now (the bed that had gained new purpose) and the long rolling days would continue as she had wanted, bitterness sliding its way between them as he exacted his revenge, inch by inch.

He said faintly, "I'll not read anymore," and the smile was gone from his face, trickling away with too much lifeblood. "A dangerous pastime."

"Be still now, Jack," she said calmly, gathering his body up and finding him cool. Every stretch of invective she'd ever heard flew through her mind, every curse in every language screamed at her inside. "Be still, close yer eyes. I take care of ye."

"Course ye will," he said, barely audible. "Ye'd never kill me. See? I still win."

* * *

He _always_ won.

There was a slightly bemused look on her face as Calypso snaked her way through Tortuga's narrow streets, which were more somber than she remembered them. A disaffected air hung over the port town; grime had gathered with mistrust and it wasn't until well after dark the merry mood Tortuga was so famous for made an appearance. By then Calypso had found her way back to the Faithful Bride, drawn by the smell of smoke and the noise. Rather than a Lioness on the hunt, she felt like a lost child. She was preoccupied, thinking of Jack alone in her hut, wondering if he had suddenly gained strength and made his escape despite her careful concoctions. But no, it was impossible—the wounds of the bullet were still seeping and his mind was still wandering in uninduced hallucinations. Had it been a week, she wondered, or many?

"Goddess," a hiss was at her ear, stirring her skin. Barbossa.

"I trust ye wit my secrets, Captain, jus' keep yer voice down."

"I've been waiting a long time," he said, his voice amiable and relaxed. But upon closer consideration, Calypso noted an ashen tinge about his face and eyes, a restrained tension in his hands. "What kept ye?"

A sliver of a smile, like a half moon, showed. "Never come between a goddess and her faitful worshipper."

Barbossa narrowed his eyes, but ventured no other question. His hands, which had rested on her shoulders at first, slid down her arms. He laced his fingers through hers, and she felt his desperation. Tauntingly, she stood on her tiptoes to meet his mouth and then trailed her lips down his neck. His skin was papery, flecked with sun and age, and it didn't warm at her touch.

"Ye feel nothing, still?"

As though she herself had caused the curse, Barbossa thrust her back and didn't respond. His was a big man, broad and noisy, with extremities sized to make him desirable to women well past his prime. But tonight he was quiet, withdrawn. Calypso was surprised by how much she enjoyed his suffering.

"I know de way out, Hector." She had never called him by that name before, and it caught his attention. He seized her narrow brown wrist and dragged her into a corner, making a show of intimidation.

"Tell me."

She laughed, knowing how it irked him. "Oh, what a price I'll demand first!"

He shook her a bit, licked the spittle off his upper lip, then changed his mind and wiped it with his sleeve. He was damp with sweat. "What price?"

"No more den ye're worth, Captain." She made the word "Captain" slow, mocking. She had to restrain herself from exploding, as humans often did, against one who had hurt their favorite lover. She wrapped her thumbs around her fingers. She oughtn't to have left Jack, even for a few hours.

Barbossa's tension was more pronounced now. "Please tell me," he said, forcing his voice to be steady.

Her eyebrow curved, drawing up the henna marks on her face and the smell of sage from her neck. The moment had come. "Ye're heir to de Brethren Court," she murmured, her voice almost a kiss on his cheek. "Ye have de power to free me… just as I have de power to free _you_."

A crash from a nearby brawl suddenly drowned out the torches, and moonlight swept in on a wind off the coast. In the darkest corner of the room, Calypso felt Barbossa's skin against her shrink back and vanish, felt the grip of his hand harden like a fragile gem. His eyes hollowed until the whites showed wider and more prominent than the black pupils inside. Calypso, who had seen death a thousand times and too well knew the fragility of man, shuddered in horror. His lips (gone for the moment) might have pressed closer to her as he said, "Ye'd make me a traitor, destine me for the deepest circle of hell?" and his jaw bones clicked as they shut.

Calypso felt her way to his skull, cold and dusted with the smell of deep wet earth. "Ye _are_ in hell," she said. "I'll make yer life one worth living, Hector, I swear… and all dat I require of ye, de only small ting I ask, is dat ye reverse a decision made a hundred years ago by men too afraid to trust me." The moonlight fled from a few new-lit torches, and Barbossa's body reformed before her eyes. "For ye _can_ trust me, Hector Barbossa… to bestow my favor where I will. Free me, and ye'll have nothing to fear."

With those last words she dashed herself against him and he could _feel_—feel as he hadn't felt in months, every line of her body, every scent… the texture of her skin and the heat within. Like a man starving he buried himself in her and her loud laughter might have been the most delicate symphony. He was suddenly terrified she would pull away—pull away and leave him alone in the dark, as he'd been… isolated and disembodied there with his guilt and his malice. And he realized he would sell anyone—anything—be it his soul or the lives of every other man in existence in order to be alive again. The musk of the bayou was thick around them both, intoxicating, burrowing into his lungs and re-teaching him what desire was. The old delicious ache formed in his middle and stung through every limb; he was alive, his heart beat strong and fast as a newborn's might. "I'll do it…" he said dimly. "Whatever ye ask, goddess, I'll do."

"Swear it."

"The day this spell is broken be the day I gather the Brethren and not rest 'till ye're free. On my life and my soul, I swear it."

They broke apart, her still laughing, him panting and all at once cold. His senses shut off as quickly and as completely as the slam of a door. Rage, cold and thorough, enveloped him now—rage and the tormenting memory of her touch.

"Tell me now," he said gruffly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to his own darkness, "how do I end this curse?"

"It be easy… or perhaps, not so easy. De gods, dey require der own back. Every piece of gold ye took, return to de island wit de lifeblood of de one who took it."

"Speak plainer. Are we all to die for this freedom?"

"Ye'll find ye can't die, not now," she said, borrowing one of Jack's catlike smiles. "But it only take a drop. Once de coins are returned and de blood offered, ye'll be human again."

"Like _you_."

Her face clouded with a hurricane's sudden chill, "Jus' remember, Hector, ye swore me an oath. Once ye free of de curse, ye won't rest 'till _I'm_ free."

"It might take some doing," Barbossa muttered, thinking out loud, musing on the hundreds of coins scattered throughout the Caribbean.

"I can wait," she purred. "I waited dis long already." She snaked out of his grip, leaving a warm, lingering breath and a biting kiss on his mouth before she vanished out into the street. She'd been gone long enough… the bayou awaited, and so did Jack.

"Calypso!"

She turned and saw he had followed her, his boots clunking on the packed earth of the street. Fiercely she said, "Dat is not my name yet… _anymore_… And not a name to shout to de wind."

"I need to confess." He did not look in the least sorry, but rather proud. As though he wanted to share some daring feat he had accomplished.

"Do I look like a priest, Hector Barbossa?" Even from here she could imagine the Black Pearl—Jack's dear-bought treasure—waiting silently in the harbor for its new master.

"I think I may have killed yer old friend, Sparrow."

"My old lover, ye mean," she said with a wicked laugh. "Him ship wort his life to ye?"

Barbossa shrugged, a rumbling volcano. "Me own life was, at any rate. A naïve boy."

"Ye envy him, den?"

The question hung on the heavy wet breeze a moment. Barbossa spit into the dirt, rearranged his arms across his chest. "He escaped this hell."

_Yes, for a different hell_, Calypso thought privately. "Life is cheap to ye. Mind it don't become worthless altogether."

Barbossa shrunk the space between them. "When we're both free, will ye forget me?"

To hear such a question coming from him—a man big and powerful and reeking with egoistic assurance—nearly made Calypso laugh. But she hid it this time, finding strange pity for Barbossa. He had limits too, then. "I won't forget ye," she said, tilting her head back so moonlight spilled across it as the clouds receded. He ventured closer and his body changed again, melting away into old tired bones half-hidden in ragged cloth. "Go to yer task, Hector."

His ghostly eyes snapped to attention. "And _you_ to yers."

* * *

"Thought ye'd gone."

Jack's voice, a languid hum in the deep gold dawn, was not quite what Calypso had expected. "I did. I came back."

"So I see." He stretched his arms up over his head, a grimace retreating from her perusal.

"Ye're awake…"

"Evidently."

"And yerself."

"No thanks to ye."

Calypso saw coffee at a boil near her fire and it pained her to think of him crawling out of that bed, hurting but determined, to complete such a simple chore. "I'm sorry I hurt ye, Jack," she sighed, hoping he wouldn't hear.

"Ye never were sorry for anything ye did," he returned, quite softly. "But ye can't help it now, can ye?"

Calypso felt around in the gathering light for a clay mug. She filled it and meandered toward Jack, wondering if he would smell Barbossa on her clothes, the way one dog could smell another. "Why does it sound like ye pity me?"

"I been thinking."

"Ye should have been sleeping."

"A fine nurse ye are," he said, only a little annoyed. He cringed when he took the mug, feeling the weight in his chest. Even speaking was a battle with his body. "I was thinking, it's always the ones as love as best that can hurt us most, aye?" Very deliberately, he took a sip of coffee and then set the mug down, exhausted and triumphant. "The ones we love most—we put ourselves in danger with them, and then they can hurt us, see?" His forehead creased when he frowned like that—boyish and thoughtful at the same time. His eyes were so very dark! They seemed to draw in any shadow nearby and swallow it as they had swallowed betrayal… even the brightest light no longer reflected from them.

And his words were salt in her wounds. "So, how will ye punish me?"

"Well, I've got plenty of time to think of that, Dalma. Plenty of time."

* * *

_Last chapter coming soon..._


	10. Morning in the Bayou

**Last chapter!! This has been one of my favorite things to write, it's been fun and challenging and different, so thanks for giving me the opportunity to mess around with it. You all have made this happen with your reviews, comments, and encouragement. I hope you've been entertained! I actually have thought of turning this into a sort of three-part series, as there are two more characters in POTC I would love to be able to address as personally. Thank you again, so SO much!! This is dedicated to all of my dear readers, with much love and many grateful hugs.**

**Ch. 10. Morning in the Bayou.**

* * *

They used to gather and mingle in the little cracks of time that had never got filled. The old ones, the ones men called 'gods', hardly comprehending anymore what they meant by the word. These were the heroes and histories, the dreams of children and the dread of the aged. Calypso remembered time out of mind when she had pulled Davy Jones into that world and then been pulled and irretrievably bound into his.

She had shared the ocean then. Nethuns had been there with laughter like a wreaking gale that broke the fragile earth they tread upon. There was the unseen one, He she had fed with offcasts of destruction… Aita, her first lover. And there had been Vanth, choosing her servants from among the children of men, Calypso's slithering half-sister, the only one she'd seen since the earth changed and the ships began taming the sea. Selvans, her long enemy, and Laran the wild one. The sky had been another color in those days—beasts had been fiercer and men (though few) had been stronger, emanating golden light in heat, clever and unafraid.

In secret moments to herself, Calypso believed that Jack had slipped through one of the last cracks of time from those days.

The others she could not speak to any longer. Where had they gone? Been buried and worn away, perhaps caught at last (like she) by lesser men, torn apart and sucked clean for their power? The earth had grown tired; the sea, complacent. There was so little left these days—so little beauty, so little courage. Calypso knew it wouldn't be long before the bayou too, (aye, even the Bayou) would be overrun and broken down. Its secrets would pitter out, the esoteric length of the river would be bent and reformed and the ships would keep coming.

Would she be there at the end, a withered old woman shrunk into the shadows, a relic of bygone days to puzzle new inhabitants? Would she escape somehow, escape her own labyrinth of despair to haunt new waters and scheme afresh? Or would her long and cautious plans tip destiny at the right moment and give her back her former realm?

Calypso fingered a sheer shred of gauze in her hands. She held it to her candle and watched it smolder and gleam, its peeling layers fast consumed until ashes blew hotly across the table where she sat. The hut was unbearably warm—set fire, in some way, by the cleansing fever that catapulted through Jack's blood after months of infection. These were the thoughts that spun tiredly in her head now, now that Jack looked toward the door with increasing determination. It wouldn't be long.

"Is it the fever what saps me strength and keeps me from escaping, or is it ye?" his mild gruffness belied the anger that grew day by day, hour by hour. He was fading without the sea. He was dissolving into his bitterness, allayed only by the breeze that pronounced a coming farewell.

Calypso said, "Revenge is de reward of de patient."

"Ye keep telling yerself that, Dalma."

The hateful zephyr tossed the curtains aside and ruffled Jack's shirt where he sat. Calypso slid two identical objects across the table. Jack's bloodshot eyes latched onto them, skeptical. "Dese are de bullets dat come out of yer chest, Jack. From yer pistol."

One of Jack's long fingers drummed on the wood absently. "Impossible, Dalma. There was one bullet in that pistol. Barbossa—"

"Knew ye didn't die easy and gave ye two," Calypso finished. She tossed him one of the bullets. "But I know dat _he_ die easy so I only give ye one. And if ye must, kill him near de water."

"Who says I'm going to kill him?" Jack retorted, wondering that something so small could have nearly spelt his end. It struck him that the object was beautiful. It had such smooth, clean lines, such precise color.

"I say so. Ye don't want to make de mistake of becoming a good man, eh?"

Jack tilted his head back, licked his lips. "I am so very wicked, Dalma, if ye only knew…" that sinning sensuous mouth sent a quiver down Calypso's thighs. "Ye'd think twice about playin' me as ye do." He stood, pasting an indifferent face on the pain it caused him, and slunk toward her.

"Ah, Jack de Sparrow, Jack de Pirate…"

He deftly scoured her bare shoulders, the skin she had bathed and oiled for him. Familiar territory. "I don't know how I can both need ye and hate ye, Dalma," as he bent to her ankles, swept up her legs. He knew her so well. "Part of me wants to kill ye, part of me wants to worship ye."

"As it should be, Jack." Calypso was glad they were on the floor now, and not the bed. Glad that Jack would rather plunder her for the pleasure she provided than kill her for his own satisfaction. For kill her he could, she had decided—she was mortal with him, exposed.

"When I leave, things will never be the same," he said, his caresses turning harsh, brutal. His weight was on her now, fiercely. "I know what ye wanted from me, Dalma. But I'll never free ye now. How do ye like that for revenge? I'm Pirate Lord and I'll see ye bound another century."

They were moving together, Jack and Calypso and the subtle black eyes at the windows, the whole bayou in unison. They were all in the rhythm of violent lovemaking; unable to tell whether lust or survival drove them on, deeper in until their skin grew together like old tree bark.

"That's not what I wanted from ye, witty Jack," Calypso hated the words that cluttered her mouth, hated the breath she wasted that way. "Not what I wanted from de first." Their tongues wrestled a moment, their hearts struggled to keep up with their furious motion, "Wit ye, I never wanted to be goddess." She had wanted to be woman, human, at peace and free in the midst of all other circumstances… wanted his perilous beauty and bird-like soul to make captivity worthwhile. It hadn't. Nights in the bayou cloyed and stung with passion and yet they flitted away, leaving a wiser morning in their place.

"I know. I know ye Dalma," Jack breathed.

"Ye don't know, Jack, and ye never did."

"Neither of us is sorry, I think," he returned. The sun still hid in every curve and twist of his skin, even after months beneath the bayou's canopy. She had wiled away days braiding his hair, pretending alternately that he was her son and her husband, knowing he was nothing but her prisoner. But now the braids fell over her and smothered her, a choking vine. Twelve months to the night had passed since she fired the pistol.

* * *

_Teague felt the habitual curl of muscles tighten in his back the further he leaned in, nearing the table and the spread of charts, sweat dribbling onto the scattered candles. The cove (well-nigh deserted this time of the year) clouded about him in ominous silence. He was thinking about Jack; thinking in a way he seldom allowed himself to think— rum and all. He'd heard nothing of the boy since Jack's dramatic exit more than a year hence… no hints or rumors of the treasure seekers, not when he'd listened to sailors at the cups, not when he'd paid an old curmudgeon to seek out word, not even when he'd sent two of his own men along the fabled path in search of them. Jack's precious Pearl still sailed, he knew now, but Jack did not. _

"_Fool lad," Teague said to the empty room for the twentieth time. "Were yer own fault if ye're dead." But remembering those challenging, demon-black eyes, Teague shuddered. A world with the boy Jack had felt wilder and more fascinating, the line between fantasy and reality skewed and nearly erased. Setting sail had always meant an adventure. Now life marched on doggedly, and flatly. The Misty Lady gathered algae and sat longer and longer in harbor. Teague had gotten old in the interim. He knew that in his patched over skin and the way his body clutched and staggered with new aches every morning. _

"_Fool lad," Teague kicked at the table leg and the candles leaked their wax across the old charts. _

"_Do ye blame him for yer bitterness, dear Captain?" _

"_I ain't Captain anymore," Teague said, taking care to pronounce the words so as not to sound drunk. "I'm keeper." _

"_Ah, yes," Earthy, sonorous laughter filled the room. _

_Teague suddenly recalled that the room had been empty before, and looked up. Calypso lounged with indolent ease against the doorframe, reeking of smoke and sex and the seducing mud of the bayou. She had grown since Teague last knew her; surety and riotous doom hung over her coffee-black skin. Younger, too, she seemed: energetically inhuman. His aches vanished, just looking at her. His back straightened and his heavy brows, so often stooped, drew back for a clearer view. _

_Calypso said, "Hello," and all her poise melted into the room. _

_Desperation, Teague thought, that's what was lurking behind her façade. "Calypso." _

"_Ye didn't answer my question, Teague," she said "Teague" instead of his given name, a slender barrier between their former dealings and the present. _

_Teague's fingers formed the shape of a minor chord against his thigh, out of habit. "It isn't seemly to speak of th' dead." _

"_Den we're well within bounds, cause Jack de Sparrow lives." _

"_Does he, now?" Teague betrayed not a flicker of emotion. He had learned long before not to trust a slant-eyed goddess on the hunt, nor a murky apparition come after too much drink. _

"_Aye, no thanks to me… or you." _

"_I raised 'im," Teague said hotly, forgetting his resolve. "I learned the boy everything I knew. It's all my doing he lived to see bread and life past that molding dock on Hispaniola." _

"_And drove him to him bargain with Jones, aye? Taught him dat life aint life without freedom, and taught him to make an idol out of him ship, till he sell his own soul for dis idea, freedom?" _

_Teague slumped, groped for a chair, sank into it. "Salt in me wounds, Calypso. Salt in me wounds. Did ye come to mock me, then?" _

"_No," she said softly. She hesitated for a moment. "I come to grieve wit ye. Cause alive or no, Jack is lost to both of us, Teague. He slipped through yer fingers and he's fast escapin' mine." _

"_Ye have him, then?" Teague suddenly looked every day of his sixty-eight years. _

_She nodded. "For a few more moments, perhaps." She slouched next to him in the chair, leaned her head on his shoulder. "He scorn me now, scorn my captivity, as ye once did." _

_Fingers went to an E chord. "Never scorned ye, Goddess. Simply couldn't set ye free, as ye wanted." _

"_Aye, he says the same." Her lips twisted wryly. "Though wit a bit more spirit." _

_Teague bristled a bit at that remark. "Ye'll find one, someday. Ye'll somehow get round our nets and escape. We've always known that." _

"_A risky way to live, eh?" her voice held no malice. "And who's to say I haven't found one already?" _

_He plucked one of her braids between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing the matted hair, feeling old desire. "It ain't yer time yet, love."_

* * *

The spell cast by the birds found itself augmented by a dirge that morning—a dirge rising up from the stone-black faces of Calypso's subjects as they lurked, waist deep in the river, to see their savior's departure. Jack stood on the porch as the sun rose, obliviously polishing his pistol.

In the last moments Calypso was surprised to find herself struck by his purity—the youthful way his smile expanding to morning, the lighthearted gleam in his eyes. It was a strange kind of purity, she thought, an honest kind; unlike the cheap appeal of naïveté, Jack's was the purity of one who has journeyed long through many hells and come away with his soul intact. It would be a long time before she saw that truth embodied so completely in another human.

"I guess dis means goodbye, eh?"

Jack tilted his head, reminding her of that first day he had come tramping through the swamp with such captivating vigor. "For a very long time, I'm afraid." His grin deepened with threat. "I can't come back here, Dalma. Bad for me health, ye see."

"I suspected as much, though ye risk de wrath of a goddess."

He shook his head, a bit helpless, and turned his pistol (newly loaded) over and over in his hands. "I don't know how to say it. Feels like—"

"Destiny?"

He nodded slightly and stepped toward her, tracing the lines of her dusky skin. "Me first love will always be the sea."

"First… and only love?"

His black eyes glinted with restless, unsatisfied passions; adventures to be had; love to be found. His mouth tipped into an unknowable smile that Calypso found already faraway as the horizon. "That remains to be seen, doesn't it?"

A great frantic wind came through then, breaking the seclusion of the bayou and drenching everything with the smell of the sea. Jack let himself down the ladder, his breath coming quick and eager; heady. He was free.

Calypso watched him wade into the water, watched his muscles work, watched him forge a path through the river. She watched the way his back grew damp with effort and the way he put his hands on the trees as though saying goodbye. She watched his figure soften and evaporate into the morning. Aye, he was free now—free and gone.

The bayou shuffled and blinked, the water teemed up and chased after him. But Calypso nodded her head once to Old Man River, turned her back to the bayou, and went inside.

"_That remains to be seen, doesn't it?"_ Yes, much remained to be seen. But for Calypso, the spell was broken. She knew with sudden glorious certainty she would escape. Watching Jack leave, she saw her own destiny. It would not be long. The day was coming—for all his promises he would be back, portending intrigue and danger, portending release. Calypso smiled to the bleached shells littering her table, smiled to the empty bed and the patient chipped mugs.

It was only a matter of time.

**THE END.**

* * *


End file.
